Karen DeSalvo

See the following -

Group of Electronic Health Record Vendors To Become Officially Interoperable

Zina Moukheiber | Forbes.com | June 10, 2014

A group of electronic health record vendors that announced to much fanfare plans to facilitate the exchange of patient data more than a year ago, will start rolling out that facility to their customers this summer...CommonWell Health Alliance members, which include Cerner, McKesson, Allscripts, athenahealth and Greenway, have embedded within their software code that allows health care providers to find and share a patient’s medical information, wherever it might be...

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Halamka's Report on the Joint HIT Standards and Policy Committee Meeting

All the members of the ONC Federal Advisory Committees met in Washington to review delivery system reform and the Interoperability Roadmap. We began the meeting with a thank you to Jodi Daniel, who will be leaving ONC after 10 years of service. Elizabeth Holland presented a data update on the Meaningful Use program. She noted that 2015 attestation will open Jan 4, 2016-Feb 29, 2016. The Meaningful Use Stage 2 final rule has not yet been released (but rumor suggests it may be released later today). Next, Karen DeSalvo presented a Delivery System Reform Update  setting the context for the kinds of interoperability needed in the future as fee for service is replaced by population-based payment.

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Halamka's Report on the June 2015 HIT Standards Committee

The June 2015 HIT Standards Committee focused on celebrating the accomplishments of those individuals who have reached their federal advisory committee term limits.  Most served 6 years...Karen DeSalvo thanked each one and I offered comments about their unique contributions, changing the fundamental trajectory of standards in the US from a 1990’s “EDI” payload model to a 2015 “Facebook” Application Program Interface model.   Their leadership has brought modern, open web standards to the healthcare domain, specified controlled vocabularies, and established appropriate security. They will be missed.

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Halamka: A Time of Great Turmoil in Healthcare IT Policy Making

We are in a time of great turmoil in healthcare IT policy making.   We have the CMS and ONC Notices of Proposed Rulemaking for Meaningful Use Stage 3, both of which need to be radically pared down. We have the Burgess Bill which attempts to fix interoperability with the blunt instrument of legislation. Most importantly we have the 21st Century Cures Act, which few want to publicly criticize. I’m happy to serve as the lightening rod for this discussion, pointing out the assumptions that are unlikely to be helpful and most likely to be hurtful. Read More »

Halamka: Advice to the New National Coordinator

Karen DeSalvo started as the new National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology on January 13, 2014.  After my brief discussion with her last week, I can already tell she's a good listener, aware of the issues, and is passionate about using healthcare IT as a tool to improve population health...What advice would I give her, given the current state of healthcare IT stakeholders?

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Hazards Tied to Medical Records Rush

Christopher Rowland | Boston Globe | July 20, 2014

Subsidies given for computerizing, but no reporting required when errors cause harm

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Health IT 2014: Interoperability, Ebola And Healthcare.gov 2.0

Billy Mitchell | FedScoop | December 18, 2014

Health IT in 2014 continued its path toward a system of interoperable and open data to improve patient care with IT systems...

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Health IT interoperability by example

John W. Loonsk | Healthcare IT News | August 31, 2015

The health IT interoperability area is so confused now that we really need to look to some very practical examples of where interoperability has been solved, at least at an entry-level, and stop some of the hand-wringing, angst, and casting about. The federal government moving into the next administration and the post – Meaningful Use era, particularly needs to focus its attention and programs to develop "entry-level" interoperability to justify the public's 30 billion dollar EHR investment and make EHR data serve broader health outcomes for patients and populations...

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Health IT Now recommends HHS, Congress take steps against non-interoperable systems

Marla Durben Hirsch | FierceEMR | June 18, 2014

Health IT Now, buoyed by RAND's recent report on electronic health records, has called on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Congress to "decertify systems that require additional modules, expenses, and customization to share data," and to investigate business practices that prohibit or restrict data sharing in federal incentive programs.

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Healthcare players are actively blocking data sharing

Lucas Mearian | Computerworld | April 15, 2015

Five years ago, only 20% of physicians used electronic medical records (EMRs). Today, 80% use them. Since the enactment of the HITECH Act, which required that EMRs be adopted across all healthcare providers, the federal government has invested more than $28 billion toward their use...

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Healthcare players are actively blocking data sharing

Lucas Mearian | Computerworld | April 15, 2015

Five years ago, only 20% of physicians used electronic medical records (EMRs). Today, 80% use them. Since the enactment of the HITECH Act, which required that EMRs be adopted across all healthcare providers, the federal government has invested more than $28 billion toward their use.

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Healthcare Services Platform Consortium Grows Exponentially - New Members Include VA, OSEHRA, and AEGIS

Press Release | Healthcare Services Platform Consortium | February 24, 2016

The Healthcare Services Platform Consortium (HSPC), a provider-led, multi-stakeholder initiative to launch a next-generation service oriented platform for healthcare, announced today several new members have joined the consortium during first quarter 2016. Among the new members are the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA), Cognitive Medical Systems, VigiLanz, Veratics, MedRed, InterSystems, AEGIS.net, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) and The Center for Healthcare Transparency.

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HHS appoints DeSalvo to head ONC

Diana Manos | Government Health IT | December 19, 2013

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday morning that Karen DeSalvo, MD, City of New Orleans Health Commissioner, will take over the helm of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Read More »

HHS CTO Susannah Fox on Health Datapalooza

Every spring, our team in the HHS IDEA Lab gears up for our biggest event of the year: the Health Datapalooza. It’s an annual celebration of the power of data that was started by my predecessor, Todd Park, in 2010. This year, we were honored to hear from an extraordinary lineup of leaders from private industry, academia and the federal government, including Vice President Biden. I thought I’d share excerpts from three of my colleagues’ speeches, to give people a sense of the scope and depth of the discussions.

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HHS Proposes Path To Improve Health Technology And Transform Care

Press Release | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | January 30, 2015

ONC issues draft nationwide health IT Interoperability Roadmap; Implementation resources also released as first deliverable...

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