Report to Congress recommends product guidance post for ONC

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has sent a report to Congress analyzing the feasibility of assisting the contributors to compare and choose certified EHRs (electronic health records) products.

The report was mandated and conducted under the authority of Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), but with the EHR Incentive and Regional Extension Center programs winding down, ONC is observing how contributors can sustain to get critical support with executing the IT (information technology).

Support is yet necessary, ONC considers, as various contributors are upgrading or replacing EHRs they purchased to gain meaningful use, and they are retooling as they get prepared for reforms in healthcare.

“Improving providers’ capability to compare and choose certified health IT will need several mechanisms that reply on support from both the federal government and private sector,” in accordance to the report.

But the extent to which ONC can offer this level of support is not still clear, appreciates a senior advisor at ONC, talking on background. But the report puts concepts on the table.

ONC already provides a Health IT Playbook to assist in choosing products, and regional extension centers, which have gave contributors technical and care transformation support, are yet functioning, however funding for the REC program is running out. The other various federal resources could come from MACRA technical assistance, as well as the Agency for Healthcare Quality, the Office of Minority Health MACRA technical assistance and Research’s Evidence Now program.

The CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), which is ramping up the latest Transforming Clinical Practices Initiative, is observing at support for physicians changing into value-based care, like providing tools at a 1-stop shop to compare vendor items. For now, the ONC report provides merely a recommendation, with no firm concepts for how it could be funded, in accordance to the OCR senior advisor.

“ONC could operate with the healthcare community to seek feedback on comparison tool requirements and share great practices with the comparison tool community,” the agency stated in its report to Congress.

In a proposed transparency initiative that could be of real value, ONC during this time of spring is releasing information from its Certified Health IT Product List under what it terms “open data” CHPL. The expectation is that the private sector and expert societies or associations will make product rankings and reviews. Also under the act of “open data” CHPL, HIT vendors were need by the day of April 13 to submit the proposed attestations that they’ll be transparent in their transaction fees and not involve in data blocking.