New This Week on HealthIT.gov

New This Week on HealthIT.gov

Affordable Care Act at 3

Off the bat, we’d like to remind you that the Affordable Care Act turns three tomorrow, and by this time next year most of the historic law’s provisions will be fully in place.

If you are interested in how the ACA is helping patients and providers, read today’s blog post by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

New on the HealthIT Buzz Blog

On the HealthIT Buzz Blog there are two compelling posts on health information exchange and a third that talks about how regional extension centers are boosting the health IT adoption rates of community health centers and other clinics.

Leading off the week, Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland explains what he has done in the adoption of electronic health records and health information exchange one of his “top strategic priorities.”

We are hoping other governors step forward to tell their stories about HIE and healthIT adoption leading to meaningful use.

This was followed by a post timed to coincide with a big meeting hosted this week by the National Association of Community Health Centers in Washington, D.C.  Conference attendees are discussing how to accelerate progress toward MU among Federally Qualified Health Centers.  As seen in this recent ONC data brief, health centers are working closely with RECs to get wired!

Finally, you will find the first in a series of stories about health information exchange. Erica Galvez, our Community of Practice Director for the State HIE Program, explains how HIE assists in the hand-offs of care to help patients avoid falling through the cracks.

Clinical Quality measures

We published a few new resources for Achieving Meaningful Use Core Measure 10: Clinical Quality Measures. 

Among the new tools now at your fingertips are:

• Clinical Quality Measure (CQM) Case for Quality Briefs
• Clinical Quality Measure (CQM) Quality Improvement Briefs
• Making Meaningful Use Meaningful
• Meaningful Use Stage 1 to Stage 2 Factsheets

New Workgroups on the HIT FACAs

We launched a number of new workgroups in the past weeks in our ongoing effort to hear from you about what’s working and what isn’t – and as a pair of commentators put it, to continue an effort to “instill public trust” in government.

Three new FACA workgroups have formed, including: the HIT Policy Consumer Empowerment Workgroup, the HIT Standards Consumer Technology Workgroup and the Data Intermediaries Tiger Team of the Quality Measures Workgroup.

Please take a look at the committees’ goals and see if you are interested in participating on our ongoing discussions about all things HIT!

EU/HHS Team Up On eHealth Roadmap

And for those interested in what’s going on across the pond, the EU’s communications directorate and HHS today announced a roadmap to help strengthen transatlantic cooperation in eHealth and Health information technologies.  Read more about the roadmap for collaboration on standards development and workforce development on healthIT.gov.