This Week's News on HealthIT.gov

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This Week's News on HealthIT.gov

Meaningful Use

Happy Friday! We wanted to remind you about an important deadline next week regarding Meaningful Use Stage 3.

Monday Jan. 14 at 11:59 p.m. EST is the deadline to comment on this request for comment on the Stage 3 definition of Meaningful Use from the Health IT Policy Committee. We are interested in hearing your thoughts and aspirations about the next iteration of meaningful use, so please weigh in! 

Town Hall

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! ONC Chief Farzad Mostashari, our leader in all things health information technology, will be hosting an online town hall meeting on Thursday, January 17. The topic is health information exchange (HIE) and governance. This is a listening session for us to hear what you have to say, so come share your ideas!

The free lunchtime webinar – being co-hosted by the National eHealth Collaborative – begins at 12:00 p.m. EST sharp and runs to 1:30 p.m.

Register to attend the Town Hall.

EHR Implementation Lessons from the Field 

A newly posted paper, EHR Implementation with Minimal Practice Disruption in Primary Care Settings by the Washington & Idaho Regional Extension Centers, reviews the challenges of implementing EHR systems and offers recommendations that can be used to minimize the risks.

For more data and information, visit the EHR implementation lifecycle steps and check out the National Learning Consortium (NLC). 

Health Information Exchange Governance

Find new information about Health Information Exchange and Governance on healthIT.gov this week. The core mission of HIE is to increase interoperability, increase trust among all participants to mobilize trusted exchange that supports patient health and care while decreasing the cost and complexity of exchange.

Check out all the new HIE Governance page at HealthIT.gov.

Another new video about HIE – Health Information Exchange: Making a Difference

More and more states and territories are working with ONC to develop and implement HIE, which you know is the ability for authorized health care providers to securely share real-time information electronically.

The new video explains how HIE is improving patient experience, quality of care, and provider workflows in Kentucky and New York, and how HIE is expected to make a difference into the future.

Health IT and ACOs on Google+

All of the busy bees over here at ONC’s Office of Communications (OCOMM) keep finding all kinds of cool new ways to connect with patients, providers and HealthIT types.

The latest is Google+. A few weeks ago we launched our new Google+ page (HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology) and earlier this week we posted a question (see below). We did the same thing for all our fans on Linked In.

If you are in the Beacon program, are part of an accountable care organization or are just a health IT wonk type, we want to hear from you. Please read our post and then answer either on Google+ or LinkedIn.

Thanks in advance for participating!

“Many experts consider the use of health information technology an integral building block to becoming an Accountable Care Organization.  As many providers gain experience with accountable care, formal and informal evaluations will soon yield more insight into the types of HIT and interventions that achieve the goals and theory of the 3-part aim of better care and lower costs through quality improvement. A test of this theory is underway in the Pioneer ACO program. 

- What do you think about this theory? 

- How are you using health IT to become an ACO?

- What are the barriers, challenges or potential wins that you see on that road to achieving the goals?