New This Week on HealthIT.gov

In This Issue:

Interoperability was the theme of the week, and ONC staff, along with National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, and many of you, attended the Health Affairs briefing on Wednesday and the ONC-West Health Initiative HCI-DC: Igniting an Interoperable Health Care System. If you didn't, take a look at the archives we linked to above.

Blue Button Pledge

Today, many of the leading U.S. pharmacies – and a few big grocery stores – took the Blue Button pledge to help their customers view, download and transmit their prescription data. Walgreens, CVS Caremark, Rite Aid, Safeway and Kroger all signed up today. Read more on the HealthIT Buzz blog.

Personal Representatives & V/D/T

Speaking of V/D/T, thanks to everyone who weighed in on our blog post regarding the potential implications of allowing family, friends or another designee to access a patient’s electronic health record. There is still time to comment, so take a look at the post and please leave a comment. Thanks!

ONC Annual Meeting webcast archive

If you missed our 2014 Annual Meeting, or want to re-experience your favorite session, you can check out the webcast archive on HealthIT.gov.

Shared Decision Making

Shared decision making is a key component of patient-centered health care. It is a process in which clinicians and patients work together to make decisions and select tests, treatments and care plans based on clinical evidence that balances risks and expected outcomes with patient preferences and values.

Get the facts about shared decision making, why it's important, what providers AND patients are saying about it, and benefits/tips. This can get you on your way to Achieving Meaningful Use Stage 2 Measure: Patient Ability To Electronically View, Download & Transmit (V/D/T) Health Information.

SAFER Webinar recording

Way back on January 30, 2014, we hosted a webinar that took a deep dive into the Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides. The presenters included Joan Ash, Hardeep Singh, and Dean Sittig – the health IT safety researchers and informatics experts who led the SAFER Guides development. We've posted the audio from the webinar and the slides on HealthIT.gov.

Make a difference in Health IT Policy and Standards

Have you ever given thought about using your experience to help inform health IT policy or to help set standards? We are seeking applications for membership to our Federal Advisory Committees – the Health IT Policy Committee and the Health IT Standards Committee. Michelle Consolazio (@m_consolazio) explains more in a new blog post.

Quality Data Model User Group Scheduled

In case you missed it, we released a new version of the Quality Data Model (QDM) in December. The QDM describes clinical concepts in a standardized format to enable electronic quality performance measurement. The model is the backbone for representing criteria used in quality measures that is currently used by stakeholders involved in electronic quality measurement development and reporting. As the new steward for the QDM, the MITRE Corporation will reconvene the QDM User Group on Feb. 19, 2014 from 1-3pm to address the backlog of existing QDM issues and change requests. Register for the webinar at https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/311758695

For more information on the QDM and QDM User Group, please visitwww.healthit.gov/quality-data-model or contact QDM@mitre.org