New This Week on HealthIT.gov

In This Issue

Word comes via a Gallup poll this week about something that I think many of us already knew: Nurses serve in the most trusted profession. American Nurses Association President Karen Daley was quoted as saying that "patients understand that nurses are committed to improving the quality of their care, and this poll reflects the high regard they have for the profession." So, for the nurses here at ONC and those working across America to use Health IT to improve health, healthcare and control costs, thanks and keep up the good work!

3-year ONC Rulemaking Road Map

Our regulatory guru, Steve Posnack (@HealthIT_Policy) and Nora Super, Acting Director of Public Affairs and Communications, discussed ONC's proposed approach to EHR Certification and released a 3-year ONC rulemaking roadmap [PDF - 263 kb] in a webinar held Dec. 18. Apologies to those of you who had trouble connecting, we plan to upgrade our own technology in 2014!

New Look for the Buzz Blog

It took a little work behind the cyber-scenes, but, if you hadn’t noticed, we revamped the look of the Buzz blog and we think you’ll like new features such as the most popular posts, a featured author, a word cloud and the short summaries of the newest blog posts. We had two new posts this week, including one by our policy chief, Jody Daniel (@JodiDaniel), explaining our governance strategy for the nationwide health information network. The second, by a couple of the Beacon Communities team members, explains the new Beacon Learning Guides ...

Beacon Learning Guides

The 17 ONC-funded Beacon Communities have compiled and synthesized their lessons learned from building health IT infrastructure, driving population health improvement and testing innovative approaches during the three-year program. This information is now available in six Learning Guides offering proven strategies and actionable information that can be adapted by hospitals, health systems, individual practices, and health-focused community organizations to help them advance community-level health care transformation using health IT.

The Learning Guides include:

Key foundational elements to support successful planning and implementation

Strategic and implementation objectives with execution tactics and case studies

Resources used by Beacon Communities such as process maps and sample documents

The six Beacon Learning Guides are:

Improving Hospital Transitions and Care Coordination Using Automated Admission, Discharge and Transfer Alerts [PDF - 2.1 MB]

Strengthening Care Management with Health Information Technology [PDF - 2.3 MB]

Capturing High Quality Electronic Health Records Data to Support Performance Improvement [PDF - 2.3 MB]

Enabling Health Information Exchange to Support Community Goals [PDF - 2.1 MB]

Driving Clinical Transformation in a Practice Setting with Health Information Technology [PDF - 4.1 MB]

Building Technology Capabilities for Population Health Measurement at the Community Level [PDF - 2.0 MB]

Call for Papers: Share Your Lessons Learned from Community-Based Health IT Initiatives

Unprecedented efforts to drive health care improvement and reduce costs using health IT are underway at the national, state, and community level. Given the complexity of these efforts and the rapid pace of development and change, those involved are often in a position of breaking new ground. eGEMs is pleased to announce a call for papers for a new special issue that will capture important insights and lessons from these efforts so that others can learn from their experiences. This special issue is sponsored by AcademyHealth's Beacon Evidence and Innovation Network, with support from the Commonwealth Fund. Deadline: April 18, 2014. Read more & submit.

HIPAA 101 for Entrepreneurs

Did you know that HIPAA not only protects patient information, but also gives patients the legal right to access their own health data? Companies developing consumer-facing apps and products will play a vital role in enabling patients to retrieve their information from providers and payers so they can use that information in a meaningful way. Last Friday, ONC provided a unique opportunity to learn more about the HIPAA privacy rule and its impact on health IT innovation through a discussion with Joy Pritts, one of the foremost experts on health IT privacy, moderated by Geoff Clapp of Better. Due to overwhelming interest from the community in this subject, ONC plans to follow up with a second event on HIPAA regulations in early February.