As Adoption Lags, Govt. Steps Up Electronic Medical Records Push

The federal government has issued a strategic plan for the next four years designed to speed the adoption of health information technology to meet President Bush's goal of widespread national adoption by 2014.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology's report, titled “ONC-Coordinated Federal Health Information Strategic Plan, 2008-2012,” describes broad goals, objectives, and specific strategies and timelines for implementing those strategies.

The plan is a sweeping blueprint for coordinating government agencies to help promote adoption of health information technology. It comes four years after Bush established a 10-year goal of achieving a national health information network. Since that time, however, physicians have been slow to adopt electronic medical records, and some leaders in the field have urged that the government take a more active role in promoting the effort (Psychiatric News, April 18).

The plan outlines two broad goals: patient-focused health care and population health.

Patient-focused health care is described as “the transformation to higher quality, more cost-efficient, patient-focused health care through electronic health information access and use by care providers and by patients and their designees.” Population health is described as “the appropriate, authorized, and timely access and use of electronic health information to benefit public health, biomedical research, quality improvement, and emergency preparedness.”

Each goal has objectives, and for each objective specific strategies are given, as well as timelines for implementation.

In a letter accompanying the strategic plan, psychiatrist Robert Kolodner, M.D., who is the national coordinator, described the vision of a national health information system and the urgency required to make it happen.

“Clinicians will have at their fingertips all of the information needed to provide the best care; individuals will have access to this and other information that can help them engage and insert their values in the decision-making process about their health and care; and secure and authorized access to health data will provide new ways that biomedical research and public health can improve individual health and the health of communities and the nation,” Kolodner wrote. “... In order to reach the goal of most Americans having access to [electronic health records] by 2014, adoption of interoperable health [information technology] systems needs to remain at the forefront of national priorities.”

“ONC-Coordinated Federal Health Information Strategic Plan, 2008-2012” is posted at<www.hhs.gov/healthit/resources/HITStrategicPlan.pdf>.▪