Registration Open for PHR Roundtable by ONC: Dec 3, 2010 in Washington, DC

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Mike Squires

Registration Open for Personal Health Records Roundtable: Dec 3, 2010

Online registration is now open for the Roundtable on “Personal Health Records – Understanding the Evolving Landscape.” This free day-long public Roundtable, hosted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), will be held on Friday, December 3 at the FTC Conference Center in Washington D.C. Register to attend in person or via webcast by visiting http://healthit.hhs.gov/PHRroundtable.

Personal Health Records — Understanding the Evolving Landscape
When:
Friday, December 3, 2010; 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
(registration check-in opens at 7:30 a.m.)Where:
FTC Conference Center
601 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001
or via webcastRegister at http://healthit.hhs.gov/blog/phr-roundtable .

For agenda and details of the panels, see previous post on e-Healthcare Marketing.

Accountable Care Organization Workshop: CMS, FTC, and OIG

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Mike Squires

Summary, Audio and Transcripts from Oct 5, 2010 Workshop on ACOs
FTC, CMS and OIG held a workshop on Accountable Care Organizations on October 5, 2010 to hear from all stakeholders.

Taft Stettinius & Holllister LLC’s summary report of the meeting on Lexology Oct 13, 2010, said ”based upon the opening comments of Don Berwick, the Administrator of CMS, FTC Chairman Jon Liebowitz, and HHS Inspector General Dan Levinson, it is clear that the agencies believe that ACOs present a significant opportunity to meet what Administrator Berwick described as the ‘triple aim’ of truly integrated health care: better care for individual patients and better health for the general population, at a lower per capita cost of achieving both without diminishing quality.”

Recordings and Transcripts for the October 5, 2010 Workshop Regarding Accountable Care Organizations, and Implications Regarding Antitrust, Physician Self-Referral, Anti-Kickback, and Civil Monetary Penalty (CMP) Laws (Posted 10/19/10) and Accessed 10/25/2010:

ONC Dir of Meaningful Use Seidman Blogs on ‘Virtual Bedside’ EHR Experience

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Mike Squires

Meaningful Use Expert’s “Virtual Bedside” Experience with EHR
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 | Posted by: Joshua Seidman PhD on ONC Health IT Buzz blog and republished on e-Healthcare Marketing.

It’s scary and emotionally painful to be 500 miles away from your dad when he gets admitted to the ICU in the middle of the night. I learned that some of that fright can be alleviated and the pain can be eased a bit by online access to his health data.

With consent, I was able to access to the Boston hospital’s patient portal, one that was developed many years ago, long before most providers understood the potential power of patient-facing health IT. My dad got the medical care he needed and when he was released from the hospital, with his consent, I also got secure access to the discharge summary and instructions in an electronic file (standardized format—CCD or continuity of care document) that I could open in a browser in a human-readable format.

I learned many things in a very personal way from this experience. There’s no substitute for timely, accurate information when you’re trying to help out family from afar. I could track key markers of clinical status to understand how my dad’s recovery was progressing. Reviewing the data in real time allowed me to piece together clinical data to know what questions to discuss with his doctors. I felt empowered by the data.

Specifically, I could view lab data, both his active and inactive medications, the radiology reports (for X-rays but not other scans), the cardiology reports and ECGs themselves, and the blood cultures. In addition, getting a summary of the entire stay on the day of discharge was very useful (even if it was not yet quite complete—I understood that some additional data may be returned to clinicians a few days later).

That’s not to say that it was a completely user-friendly experience, so I have offered the hospital’s IT team my own personal thoughts on opportunities for improvement. Most importantly, there were very few links to lay content for contextualization (just a few of the labs had links and the content at those links was mediocre). I was able to make sense of all of it with help from internists I work with, but a significant portion of data would otherwise have been difficult for me to understand.

That’s absolutely NOT a reason to close off access to the patient/family (I’m clearly much better able to move forward with the raw data than no data and nobody’s forcing me or anyone else to look at it). Rather, there is infrastructure that can be built to support better understanding. Data can be linked to consumer content so that context is provided for every data element. This can be done via the HL7 Infobutton standard or an XML web services platform (for example, open-source software will soon be available from the National Library of Medicine—MedlinePlus Connect—and several other content vendors already provide similar solutions). This should be done both for the online portal and the CCD/discharge summary. In addition, Kaiser Permanente recently donated to HHS its Convergent Medical Terminology that facilitates the translation of clinical terms into consumer-friendly language.

Some data were not made available to us, such as CT scan results. Although there is a document explaining exclusions from the patient-facing portal that the hospital makes available upon request (for detail, see JAMIA article on the topic), it would be much easier if data produced on that patient but not available to patient/family was stated explicitly on each page what is not there. Without noting in the portal what diagnostic tests were performed but not reported left me wondering if critical tests were carried out and what important information the clinicians may be missing in diagnosing the case.

It’s also not clear why or how certain data are excluded. As I noted, some of the lab data were mysterious numbers upon first examination. The explanation that time is necessary for clinicians to communicate with patient/family doesn’t hold up if the patient/family is left in the dark (that is, if information is not CLEARLY communicated to the patient in some other way, which is expecting a lot more of the clinicians than is probably reasonable).

The most glaring omission was progress notes, which would have been very useful. Progress notes would seemingly be among the easier information for lay people to understand. This health system is participating in a pilot project in the outpatient setting. Pending results from the “Open Notes Project,” the hospital likely will be making those notes available for hospitalized patients and families as well.

Another functionality that the portal has available for outpatients that would have been incredibly valuable for me is secure messaging. There was no opportunity for electronic communication with the ICU or medical unit care team. Phone communication is very hard for care teams in the ICU and on the floor, so having an opportunity to exchange secure email with them would be much more convenient for them and for family members than relying solely on telephone tag.

Those areas for improvement notwithstanding, there’s no doubt that this portal is absolutely transformative from a patient/caregiver perspective. It was incredibly valuable in helping me to understand what’s going on with my dad. Now that I’ve had this experience, it would be absolutely maddening and emotionally painful if I had to go through this again without access to data. I hope that meaningful use of EHRs helps to make this kind of portal the rule rather than the exception.

Joshua J. Seidman, PhD
Director, Meaningful Use
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As of Oct 22, 2010, there were nine comments on this ONC’s Health IT Buzz blog post. To see those comments and post comments directly, click here.

Miscommunication Among Caregivers Tackled by Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Mike Squires

Top U.S. Hospitals Identify Causes, Develop Targeted Solutions to Save Lives
October 21, 2010 Press Release from Joint Commission excerpted below.

(OAKBROOK TERRACE, IL – October 21, 2010) An estimated 80 percent of serious medical errors involve miscommunication between caregivers when responsibility for patients is transferred or handed-off. Recognizing this as a critical patient safety issue, a group of 10 leading U.S. hospitals and health care systems teamed up with the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare to use new methods to find the causes of and put a stop to these dangerous and potentially deadly breakdowns in patient care.

Picture above clicks through to Joint Commission page with actual video.
See storyboard Slide Set for “Improving Transitions of Care Hand-off Communications”

Health care organizations have long struggled with the process of passing necessary and critical information about a patient from one caregiver to the next, or from one team of caregivers to another. A hand-off process involves “senders,” the caregivers transmitting patient information and releasing the care of the patient to the next clinician, and “receivers,” the caregivers who accept the patient information and care of the patient.

The Hand-off Communications Project began in August 2009. During the measure phase of the project, the participating hospitals found that, on average, more than 37 percent of the time hand-offs were defective and didn’t allow the receiver to safely care for the patient. Additionally, 21 percent of the time senders were dissatisfied with the quality of the hand-off. Using solutions targeted to the specific causes of an inadequate hand-off, participating organizations that fully implemented the solutions achieved an average 52 percent reduction in defective hand-offs.

The 10 hospitals and health systems that volunteered to address hand-off communications as a critical patient safety problem are:

Exempla Lutheran Medical Center, Wheat Ridge, Colorado
Fairview Health Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Intermountain Healthcare LDS Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah
The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland
Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center, Clackamas, Oregon
Mayo Clinic Saint Marys Hospital, Rochester, Minnesota
New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York
North Shore-LIJ Health System Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center, New Hyde Park, New York
Partners HealthCare, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
Stanford Hospital & Clinics, Palo Alto, California

Although The Joint Commission requires accredited organizations to use a standardized approach to hand-off communications, breakdowns in communication have been a leading contributing factor in sentinel events, which are unexpected occurrences involving death or serious physical or psychological injury, or the risk thereof. In addition to patient harm, defective hand-offs can lead to delays in treatment, inappropriate treatment, and increased length of stay in the hospital.

Recognizing that there is no quick fix, the Center and the participating hospitals set out to solve the problems through the application of Robust Process Improvement™ tools. RPI is a fact-based, systematic, and data-driven problem-solving methodology that allows project teams to discover specific risk points and contributing factors, and then develop and implement solutions targeted to those factors to increase overall patient safety and health care quality. Barriers to effective hand-offs experienced by receivers include incomplete information, lack of opportunity to discuss the hand-off, and no hand-off occurred. Senders identified too many delays, receiver not returning a call, or receiver being too busy to take a report as reasons for hand-off failures.

“These 10 organizations are leading the way in finding specific solutions to the complex problem of hand-off communication failures,” says Mark R. Chassin, M.D., M.P.P., M.P.H., president, The Joint Commission. “A comprehensive approach that focuses on systems is the only way to ensure that the many caregivers upon whom patients rely are successfully communicating vital information during these transitions in care.”

The targeted hand-off solutions from the Center, which are described using the acronym SHARE, address the specific causes of unsuccessful hand-offs. SHARE refers to:

Standardize critical content, which includes providing details of the patient’s history to the receiver, emphasizing key information about the patient when speaking with the receiver, and synthesizing patient information from separate sources before passing it on to the receiver.
Hardwire within your system, which includes developing standardized forms, tools and methods, such as checklists, identifying new and existing technologies to assist in making the hand-off successful, and stating expectations about how to conduct a successful hand-off.
Allow opportunity to ask questions, which includes using critical thinking skills when discussing a patient’s case as well as sharing and receiving information as an interdisciplinary team (e.g., a pit crew). Receivers should expect to receive all key information about the patient from the sender, receivers should scrutinize and question the data, and the receivers and senders should exchange contact information in the event there are any additional questions.
Reinforce quality and measurement, which includes demonstrating leadership commitment to successful hand-offs such as holding staff accountable, monitoring compliance with use of standardized forms, and using data to determine a systematic approach for improvement.
Educate and coach, which includes organizations teaching staff what constitutes a successful hand-off, standardizing training on how to conduct a hand-off, providing real-time performance feedback to staff, and making successful hand-offs an organizational priority.

In addition to hand-off communications, the Center is aiming to reduce surgical site infections (SSI) following colorectal surgery through a new project launched in August 2010 in collaboration with the American College of Surgeons. Participating organizations include the Mayo Clinic, OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, North Shore-LIJ Health System, Cleveland Clinic, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The solutions for this project are expected to be published in the fall of 2011.

All Joint Commission-accredited health care organizations have access to the solutions through the Targeted Solutions Tool™ (TST), which provides a step-by-step process to measure performance, identify barriers to excellent performance, and implement the Center’s proven solutions that are customized to address an organization’s specific barriers. The first set of targeted solutions, created by eight of the country’s leading hospitals and health care systems working in collaboration with the Center, focuses on improving hand hygiene. Accredited organizations can access the TST and hand hygiene solutions on their secure Joint Commission Connect extranet. The targeted solutions for hand-off communications are currently being pilot tested to prove their effectiveness in demographically diverse hospitals and will be added to the TST in the second half of 2011. A project to reduce the risk of wrong site surgery is also in process. Future projects are expected to focus on preventable hospitalizations, medication errors, and other aspects of infection control.

Statements from the Center’s participating hospitals
“The communication that is involved in patient transfers is a critical concern that can have a severe impact on care. Therefore, we are pleased to participate in The Joint Commission’s Hand-off Communications Project to find ways of improving this process. I am proud of our employees and their efforts. It is rewarding to know that their work combined with similar activities at the other project participant sites will help improve patient-centered health care across the country.”
Michael J. Dowling, president and CEO, North Shore-LIJ Health System

“This work demonstrates a new and exciting way to deliver safer care. By collaborating with leading institutions around the country, we’re identifying proven strategies that improve communications during critical points of transfer for our patients.”
Mark Eustis, president and CEO, Fairview Health Services

“Patients’ safety is greatly enhanced when we have smooth and effective communication hand-offs as patients move across care settings. So, patients everywhere will benefit from what we and the other leading health care programs have learned in this collaborative effort with The Joint Commission. This initiative greatly increases the chances for good, safe continuity of care for everyone.”
Susan Mullaney, administrator, Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center

“Partners HealthCare frequently collaborates with other institutions across the nation on patient quality and safety initiatives — but has never worked with such a comprehensive group at the same time. This collaboration has produced results beyond the capability of any single participant and validates The Joint Commission’s proposition that critical issues in health care can be addressed in a rigorous and thoughtful way. I know that our patients, and patients across the country, will reap benefits from this work.”
Terrence O’Malley, M.D., medical director, Non-Acute Care Services, Partners HealthCare, Massachusetts General Hospital

“We know that breakdowns in communication that can occur when patients are handed-off from one caregiver to another are a leading cause of patient harm and medical errors. Few areas within the spectrum of patient care give us such an enormous opportunity to improve patient outcomes and reduce mistakes as improving these communications. The Joint Commission’s initiative in this area is a welcome start.”
Ronald R. Peterson, president, The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, and executive vice president, Johns Hopkins Medicine

“We believe that this has been an outstanding project and we are thrilled to have been a participant. Hand-off communication is critical to the patient care process. Being able to identify where there are breakdowns in the hand-off process and focus on where we can improve, as well as develop targeted solutions, will improve the quality of care our patients receive.”
Kevin Tabb, M.D., CMO, Stanford Hospital & Clinics

”Exempla Lutheran Medical Center is proud to participate in the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare’s critical initiative to improve the quality of hand-off communications. We know how important it is to communicate accurately and effectively when we transfer patients from one caregiver to another. But what is it that interferes with those communications? Working with the Center and the other participating hospitals, and with the use of Lean Six Sigma, we identified some of the critical barriers to effective communication to establish processes that can be replicated to consistently make patient transfers safer. We are committed to working with the Center and the other participating hospitals to help solve these complex patient safety issues and share best practices.”
Grant Wicklund, president and CEO, Exempla Lutheran Medical Center

The Center is grateful for the generous leadership and support of the American Hospital Association, BD, Ecolab, GE Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Johnson & Johnson and Medline Industries, as well as the support of GOJO Industries, Inc. and The Federation of American Hospitals.
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ONC Roundtable: Personal Health Records – Understanding the Evolving Landscape

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Mike Squires

PHR Roundtable: December 3, 2010
(Excerpted from ONC site on October 22, 2010)
The Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will host a free day-long public Roundtable on “Personal Health Records — Understanding the Evolving Landscape.” The Roundtable is designed to inform ONC’s Congressionally mandated report on privacy and security requirements for non-Covered Entities (non-CEs), with a focus on personal health records (PHRs) and related service providers (Section 13424 of the HITECH Act).

The Roundtable will include four panels of prominent researchers, legal scholars, and representatives of consumer, patient, and industry organizations. It will address the current state and evolving nature of PHRs and related technologies (including mobile technologies and social networking), consumer and industry expectations and attitudes toward privacy and security practices, and the pros and cons of different approaches to the requirements that should apply to non-CE PHRs and related technologies.

Registration is available as of Oct 26, 2010, click here.
Public comment will open in October.

WHEN:
Friday, December 3, 2010
8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. (Check-in begins at 7:30 a.m.)

WHERE:
FTC Conference Center
601 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001

or via Webcast

PURPOSE OF ROUNDTABLE
The purpose of this Roundtable is to collect information that will assist in preparation of the Congressional report mandated by Section 13424 of the HITECH Act, which directed the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), in consultation with the Federal Trade Commission, to conduct a study and make recommendations related to the application of privacy and security requirements to non-HIPAA Covered Entities, with a focus on personal health record vendors and related service providers.

AGENDA and PANEL DESCRIPTIONS
7:30 a.m. Facility Opens. Check-in.

8:30 am - Welcome: David Blumenthal, MD, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

8:45 am – Setting the Stage: Joy Pritts, JD, HHS Chief Privacy Officer

9:10 am – Panel One – PHRs: Origins, Developments, Privacy and Security Practices
The first panel will describe and discuss the history and current state of personal health records (PHRs), including types of PHR vendors, business models, and privacy and security practices.

10:45 am – Panel Two – PHRs and Related Technologies: New Forms, New Audiences, New Challenges
The second panel will discuss how PHRs are evolving, including the connection to mobile technologies and social networking, and will address privacy and security practices and challenges in this evolving context. The panelists will address how PHR vendors are reaching out to new markets and patient populations.

12:15 pm - Lunch Break

1:15 pm - Panel Three – Privacy and Security of Identifiable Health Information in PHRs and Related Technologies: Expectations and Concerns
The third panel will provide information on and discuss consumer expectations and concerns related to the privacy and security of identifiable health information in PHRs and related technologies. It will also explore the attitudes of health care providers and industry groups to the privacy and security of PHRs.

2:50 pm – Panel Four – Perspectives on Privacy and Security Requirements for PHRs and Related Technologies
The final panel will address the need for privacy and security requirements for PHRs and related non-CE entities, in accordance with the study required by Congress. It will provide a forum for different views on the appropriate regulation, if any, or other requirements that should be applicable to non-CE PHRs and related service providers and technologies. This panel will have two sub-panels. The first sub-panel will include representatives of federal and state agencies with current enforcement authority. The second sub-panel will explore whether there is a need for regulation and other requirements and the pros and cons of different approaches to government regulation and private sector oversight.

4:20 pm – Closing: Joy Pritts, JD, HHS Chief Privacy Officer

4:30 pm – End

ONC Economist Buntin Blogs About Health IT Job Growth

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Mike Squires

ONC’s Connection to the Nobel Prize
Friday, October 22nd, 2010 | Posted by: Melinda Buntin and Aaron Schwartz on ONC’s Health IT Buzz Blog, and republished here by e-Healthcare Marketing.

Last week, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortenson, and Christopher Pissarides, whose work addressed questions about how unemployed workers find jobs and what role economic policy plays in unemployment. The Recovery Act, of which HITECH is a part, was designed to boost employment and make infrastructure investments that would pay off for the country over the long term. At ONC we’ve focused heavily on the pay-offs to investment in health IT in the forms of better quality and efficiency in care delivery. But we haven’t lost sight of the role we play in creating jobs and training a new generation of health IT workers.

The ONC Office of Economic Analysis and Modeling has an ongoing project examining how employment in the field of health IT is growing, a project that builds on the theoretical foundations laid down by this week’s Nobel laureates. This would be an easier task if there were existing data on employment levels for health IT workers. However, because there is such a diversity of occupations related to health IT, no such measures exist. We developed a set of measures using data from health IT-related job listings as a proxy for health IT employment. One of Diamond, Mortenson and Pissarides’ models showed that employment and job vacancies move together (i.e. a high number of vacancies suggests not only that demand for workers is up but that employment is up as well.)

In our work we are tracking the online job listings containing phrases like “electronic health record”. As you can see below, based on this measure, health IT-related job listings are on the rise! Indeed, to use a concept that we learned from Dale Jorgenson — an economist on many short lists for a future Nobel Prize – the relationship between the passage of HITECH in early 2009 and the dramatic rise in job listings citing electronic health records is significant according to the “intra-ocular test” – i.e. it hits you between the eyes.

So what does this mean for ONC? We have a way of monitoring the effects of our programs and regulations on the broader economy, and our findings have reinforced the need for the health IT workforce program to train Americans to meet the increased demand for employees with health IT skills.

“electronic health records” Job Trends

“electronic Health Records” jobs

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To post any comments, go directly to this post on ONC’s Health IT Buzz Blog.

Privacy & Security ‘Tiger Team’ Seeks Comments on Provider-Entity Authentication: Due Oct 29

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Mike Squires

Privacy & Security “Tiger Team” Seeks Comments on Provider-Entity Authentication
Please comment by October 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 | Posted by: Deven McGraw and Paul Egerman and reposted here by e-Healthcare Marketing.

The Privacy & Security Tiger Team is currently considering policy recommendations to ensure that authentication “trust” rules are in place for information exchange between provider-entities (or organizations). We are currently evaluating these trust rules at the organizational level, and as such, our scope here does not include authentication of individual users of electronic health record (EHR) systems. For purposes of this discussion, authentication is the verification that a provider entity (such as a hospital or physician practice) seeking access to electronic protected health information is the one claimed, and the level of assurance is the degree of confidence in the results of an authentication attempt.

We hope that we can have a robust discussion on this blog that provides valuable input on this topic. All comments are welcome, but we particularly encourage you to consider the following questions:

What strength of provider-entity authentication (level of assurance) might be recommended to ensure trust in health information exchange (regardless of what technology may be used to meet the strength requirement)?
Which provider-entities can receive digital credentials, and what are the requirements to receive those credentials?
What is the process for issuing digital credentials (e.g., certificates), including evaluating whether initial conditions are met and re-evaluation on a periodic basis?
Who has the authority to issue digital credentials?
Should ONC select an established technology standard for digital credentials and should EHR certification include criteria that tests capabilities to communicate using that standard for entity-level credentials?
What type of transactions must be authenticated, and is it expected that all transactions will have a common level of assurance?

Please comment by October 29, 2010, and identify which question(s) you are responding to.

Thank you,
Deven McGraw and Paul Egerman
Privacy & Security Tiger Team Co-Chairs

Please comment directly on ONC Health IT Buzz blog by clicking on this link.

Blumenthal Letter #20: Health IT Vendor Help Sought on Disparities in EHR Adoption

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Mike Squires

A Letter to the Vendor Community: Health IT and Disparities

: Dr. David Blumenthal

A Message from Dr. David Blumenthal
National Coordinator for
Health Information Technology
October 18, 2010
Excerpted from ONC site on Oct 21, 2010

These are historic times. The HITECH Act is bringing the power of electronic health records to our health care system. We are writing to solicit your assistance in making sure that we are not creating a new form of “digital divide” and want to make sure that health IT vendors include providers who serve minority communities in their sales and marketing efforts.

Both the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Office of Minority Health (OMH) appreciate the significant benefits that the use of health information technology (HIT) and electronic health records (EHR) provide to both healthcare providers and patients in delivering and managing health. Some of these benefits include improved personal decision-making and increased patient safety (resulting in a decrease of medical errors) – both of which lead to improved quality and a more efficient delivery of care, that may result in the prospect of cost savings.

It is absolutely necessary that the leading EHR vendors work together, continuing to provide EHR adoption opportunities for physicians and other healthcare providers working within underserved communities of color. Despite our best efforts, data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey indicates that EHR adoption rates remain lower among providers serving Hispanic or Latino patients who are uninsured or relied upon Medicaid. Moreover, this data also identifies that EHR adoption rates among providers of uninsured non-Hispanic Black patients are lower than for providers of privately insured non-Hispanic White patients.

Racial and ethnic minorities remain disproportionately affected by chronic illness(es), a contributing factor to intolerably high mortality and morbidity rates. Electronic health records possess the ability to help improve both the quality and efficiency of medical care accessible by minorities, so that perhaps rates of chronic illness, mortality and morbidity decrease within these communities. It is critical that this administration, Regional Extension Centers and EHR vendors work together and focus substantial efforts on these priority populations.

To discuss outreach opportunities further, please contact Dr. Sachin H. Jain, Sachin.jain@hhs.gov at ONC and Commander David Dietz, David.Dietz@hhs.gov at OMH.

Sincerely,
David Blumenthal, MD, MPP
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

Garth N. Graham, MD, MPH
Director of the Office of Minority Health

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) encourages you to share this information as we work together to enhance the quality, safety and value of care and the health of all Americans through the use of electronic health records and health information technology.

For more information and to receive regular updates from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, please subscribe to ONC’s Health IT News list.

Health IT Community College Consortia Directory: Educating HIT Professionals

Posted on October 16, 2010 by Mike Squires

Directory of Community Colleges Participating in Workforce Training Program
http://healthit.hhs.gov/communitycollege
The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT has added Web sites for the Health IT Workforce training programs of most of the participating Community Colleges. The fully sortable list can be reached at the ONC page cited above. The list below is pre-sorted by state.

ONC Community College Consortium:
Two of the five consortium have established group Web sites:
Midwest Community College HIT Consortium:
http://www.mwhit.org/
Western Region Health IT Workforce Training:
http://wrhealthit.org/

Community Colleges Sorted by State
Many contain links to the programs.
Excerpted from ONC Web site on 10/16/2010.

School	Region	City	State
National Park Community College – AR	D	Hot Springs	AR
Pima College	B	Tucson	AZ
Maricopa College	B	Phoenix	AZ
Los Rios Community College District	B	Sacramento	CA
Cosumnes River College	B	Sacramento	CA
Butte College	B	Oroville	CA
Mission College	B	Santa Clara	CA
Fresno City College	B	Fresno	CA
Santa Barbara City College	B	Santa Barbara	CA
Cypress College	B	Cypress	CA
East LA College	B	Monterey Park	CA
Santa Monica College	B	Santa Monica	CA
Orange Coast College	B	Costa Mesa	CA
San Diego Mesa College	B	San Diego	CA
Pueblo Community College	A	Pueblo	CO
Capital Community College	E	Hartford	CT
Community College of DC	E	Washington	DC
Broward College – FL	D	Coconut Creek	FL
Indian River State College – FL	D	Ft. Pierce	FL
Santa Fe College – FL	D	Gainesville	FL
Atlanta Technical College	D	Atlanta	GA
U of Hawaii Community College – Kapiolan	B	Honolulu	HI
Des Moines Area Community College	C	Ankeny	IA
Kirkwood Community College	C	Cedar Rapids	IA
North Idaho College	A	Coeur d’Alene	ID
Moraine Valley Community College	C	Palos Hills	IL
Johnson County Community College	C	Overland Park	KS
Kentucky Comm and Tech Coll System	D	Versailles	KY
Delgado Community College – LA	D	New Orleans	LA
Bristol Community College	E	Fall River	MA
Community College of Baltimore County	E	Baltimore City	MD
Kennebec Valley Community College	E	Fairfield	ME
Southern Maine Community College	E	South Portland	ME
Delta College	C	University Center	MI
Lansing Community College	C	Lansing	MI
Macomb Community College	C	Warren	MI
Wayne County Community College	C	Detroit	MI
Normandale Community College	C	Bloomington	MN
St. Louis Community College	C	St. Louis	MO
Hinds Community College – MS	D	Raymond	MS
Itawamba Community College – MS	D	Tupelo	MS
Montana Tech	A	Butte	MT
Pitt Community College	D	Winterville	NC
Catawba Valley Community College – NC	D	Hickory	NC
Central Piedmont Community College – NC	D	Charlotte	NC
Pitt Community College – NC	D	Winterville	NC
Lake Region State College	A	Devil’s Lake	ND
Metropolitan Community College	C	Omaha	NE
Community College system of New Hampshire	E	Concord	NH
Brookdale Community College	E	Lincroft	NJ
Burlington County College	E	Pemberton	NJ
Camden County College	E	Blackwood	NJ
Essex County College	E	Newark	NJ
Gloucester County College	E	Sewall	NJ
Ocean County College	E	Toms River	NJ
Passaic County Community College	E	Paterson	NJ
Raritan Valley Community College	E	Branchburg	NJ
College of Southern Nevada	B	Las Vegas	NV
Bronx Community College	E	Bronx	NY
Suffolk County Community College	E	Brentwood	NY
Westchester Community College	E	Valhalla	NY
West Virginia Northern Community College	E	Wheeling	NY
Cuyahoga Community College	C	Cleveland	OH
Cincinnati State Technical & Community College	C	Cincinnati	OH
Columbus State Community College	C	Columbus	OH
Sinclair Community College	C	Dayton	OH
Tulsa Community College – OK	D	Tulsa	OK
Community College of Allegheny County	E	Pittsburgh	PA
Florence/Darlington – SC	D	Florence	SC
Dakota State University	A	Madison	SD
Chattanooga State Community College – TN	D	Chaaannooga	TN
Dyersburg State Community College – TN	D	Dyersburg	TN
Walters State CC – TN	D	Morristown	TN
Dallas County Comm Coll District – TX	D	Dallas	TX
Houston Community College – TX	D	Houston	TX
Midland College – TX	D	Midland	TX
Salt Lake Community College	A	Salt Lake City	UT
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Blumenthal Letter #19: The Health IT Workforce Development Program: Help Is on the Way

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Mike Squires

The Health IT Workforce Development Program:
Help Is on the Way

Dr. David Blumenthal

A Message from Dr. David Blumenthal,
the National Coordinator for
Health Information Technology
October 12, 2010
(Excerpted from ONC site 10/12/2010)
When I talk with health professionals around the country about health information technology (health IT), they tell me they’re worried about a lack of technical support to help them become meaningful users of certified electronic health records (EHRs).

Family physicians, in fact, say the lack of technical support is their biggest concern. Dr. Jason Mitchell of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Center for Health IT recently commented in an issue of AAFP News Now on the need for more resources to put people with expertise on the ground.

With so many clinicians making the transition to EHRs in the coming year, Dr. Mitchell says, the expertise that exists right now is stretched too thin.

In fact the data indicate a shortfall over the next five years of about 50,000 qualified health IT workers required to meet the needs of health professionals and hospitals as they move to adopt EHRs. As one vendor recently said, what we need is a “small army.”

But clinicians don’t have to make the transition alone. ONC recognizes the technical and logistical challenges involved in installing, using, and maintaining EHRs. And we are facing this problem head on.

The Health IT Workforce Development Program

To help meet the growing demand for health IT professionals, ONC has awarded $84 million in funding for the Health IT Workforce Development Program, which consists of four key initiatives to support training and certification of skilled workers:

Community college non-degree training programs
Development of high-quality educational materials
A competency exam program to evaluate trainee knowledge and skills
University-based training programs for highly specialized health IT roles

The Health IT Workforce Development Program is part of our comprehensive plan to facilitate EHR implementation and aims to ensure health professionals will have qualified technical support. It also provides a promising new career path for up and coming job seekers.

And the good news is that the program is already well under way. In fact, we are starting to see the first results.

Graduates Already On Their Way

With funding from ONC, the University of Texas at Austin has implemented a new Health IT Summer Certificate Program — a program that graduated its first class of students this summer. The university is part of a consortium led by Texas State University and funded under ONC’s Program of Assistance for University-Based Training.

The students, now certified “Health Information Managers and Exchange Specialists,” spent their summer learning:

The fundamentals of health IT
Business models used in medical practice
Medical practice workflow
Use of six EHR systems

The full-time program takes nine weeks and provides intensive contact with the health IT business community through coursework and practice. It will be repeated in 2011, 2012, and 2013.

Right now, most of the graduates are looking to enter — or have already entered — the health IT workforce. The remainder will be entering after they complete their college education next year.

Graduates are landing jobs with consulting firms, software vendors, technical assistance companies, and health care providers.

Next year, the University of Texas at Austin will begin offering three additional certificate programs in the following areas: Health Information Privacy and Security, Public Health Informatics, and Health Information Technology Sub-Specialist.

Community Colleges Use New Health IT Curriculum

Another initiative of the Health IT Workforce Development Program is the Curriculum Development Centers Program. Its purpose is to fund institutions of higher education to support the development of health IT curricula.

Community colleges that are participating in the Community College Consortia to Educate Health Information Technology Professionals in Health Care Program, also funded by ONC, are now using the health IT curriculum developed by the Curriculum Development Centers.

The five consortia include 84 community colleges — all of which are committed to training 10,500 community college students in health IT each year.

Health IT classes have already started in most of these community colleges, and in just six months or less, these students can be ready for jobs helping physicians adopt and use EHRs.

What This Means

The ball is rolling. Health IT workforce trainees are being fast-tracked. A new curriculum has been developed and disseminated. Very soon, support will be available to help physicians in the following areas:

Assess workflows
Select hardware and software
Work with vendors
Install and test systems
Diagnose IT problems
Train practice staff on systems

All in all, the Health IT Workforce Development Program is expected to reduce the shortfall of skilled health IT professionals by 85%. The highly trained and specialized personnel developed through these programs will play a critical role in supporting physicians nationwide as they transition to EHRs.

Help is not only on the way—it’s here.

Sincerely,

David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P.
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

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See all David Blumenthal’s Letters, on ONC’s Coordinator’s Corner.