The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology issued a health IT strategic plan for 2011 through 2015 for public review on Friday afternoon, and already comments are beginning to flow via online posts, where ONC is taking comments through April 22. 

The plan, mandated under the HITECH Act, includes agenda developed by ONC and other federal partners, and leverages the work of the HIT Policy Committee, according to National Coordinator David Blumenthal, MD.

The broad goals outlined in the plan include:

• Achieve adoption and information exchange through meaningful use of health IT;
• Improve care, improve population health and reduce healthcare costs through the use of health IT;
• Inspire confidence and trust in health IT;
• Empower individuals with health IT to improve their health and the healthcare system; and
• Achieve rapid learning and technological advancement.

The 80-page plan goes into specifics on how the federal government can achieve its goals. Some of these include: accelerating EHR adoption; providing implementation support; supporting the training of an expanded HIT workforce; and encouraging the use of meaningful use in medical education and certification.

"The adoption and meaningful use of EHRs is the unifying focal point of our strategy," Blumenthal said.

As of 3 p.m. on Monday, there were 19 comments on the ONC website.

Some of the commenters' concerns included:

• ONC may not have done an extensive enough review of available standards for vocabularies used in data exchange;
• When clinicians buy EHR products now, they marry a database structure, for better and for worse. The cost of new products and data migration is prohibitive;
• If a system does not follow the flow of the clinical work, it will likely not be adopted and will not be used to achieve meaningful use criteria;
• Competitive advantage is an important point. Doctors can still see more patients per day and at less cost by using paper.

[See related stories: Delicate balance: Moving to Stage 2; CMS has paid out $37M in EHR incentives so far.]

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