In This Issue

We're wondering why there isn't a Heart for Health IT conversation going on for Valentine's Day. Anyone? Been through the box of Conversation Hearts and the best we can come up with is one of our own: "Be Wired: Use an EHR."

Blogging, blogging, blogging … this week was busy for some of our HealthIT Buzz blog writers who wrote three new posts.

EHR Certification Transparency

For those in the market for an electronic health record, ONC is now requiring that thetesting results of certified EHRs in 2014 be available to the public. Steve Posnack (@HealthIT_Policy) writes that, in response to feedback from users, ONC added this requirement in the 2014 final rule. The second transparency measure will require vendors to disclose "any additional types of costs that an eligible provider, eligible hospital, or critical access hospital would pay to implement the Complete EHR's or EHR Module's capabilities in order to attempt to meet meaningful use objectives and measures."

Happy Birthday RECs

Next up, Happy Birthday to the RECs! Regional extension centers are 4 and they have exceeded their goals to help providers reach meaningful use requirements. The OPAS team of Kim Lynch (@Klynch7) and Mat Kendall (@MatKendall) write that "more than 50 percent of eligible professionals have demonstrated meaningful use and received an incentive payment as part of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Payment Program which is administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)."

Digital Privacy Notice Challenge

And finally, in an effort to safeguard patient health information, ONC's privacy chief, Joy Pritts, penned this blog post about a new digital privacy notice challenge. In short, Pritts issued "a call for designers, developers, and patient privacy experts to create and submit an online notice of privacy practices that is compelling, readable, and understandable by patients and easily integrated into Web sites." Interested? Check out our challenge webpage for more details.

Resource Repository

ONC has developed and posted provider resources on Healthit.gov for several years. Now these tools are all in one place. The resource repository lets users filter by: topic, practice type, role in practice, and several other dimensions. In addition to consolidating these tools into a filterable list, we also added a 5-star rating feature that lets you give ONC and other users feedback on these tools. So, check it out and rate the documents you find useful and those you don’t. If you know of or have a resource you’d like us to use or link to please contact Peter Keesey at peter.keesey@hhs.gov.