The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) is creating a dashboard of provider information to assess the performance of ONC HIT grantees.
The "ONC Health IT Dashboard," announced in the Federal Register Dec. 22, will create databases of individual office-based healthcare providers who are enrolled in one of ONC's regional extension centers and/or participating in other federal HIT programs, such as the electronic health record incentive program. The purpose of the dashboard is to "assess, improve and publicize the effectiveness of ONC health IT grants."
The datasets will enable ONC to evaluate the status of HIT implementation based on parties registered to receive EHR implementation assistance. ONC then will be able to compare the evaluations to the grantees' progress reports to validate claims submitted for grant payments, and share the evaluations with the grantees to help improve performance.
The records will be gleaned from several sources, such as extension centers' records of providers who have signed on for assistance, provider attestations filed as part of the EHR incentive program, and private vendors that monitor HIT adoption trends and activity. The information itself is pretty granular, including physicians' National Provider Identifier numbers, contact information, demographics, and the systems and functionalities of the EHRs being used at each site.
ONC also will make aggregate data of the providers' publicity available in order to make estimates about HIT adoption. The dashboard will not contain patient information.
Under the HITECH Act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, $667 million is allocated to support REC efforts to help providers adopt EHRs.
The system will become effective in 30 days. ONC is accepting public comment on the initiative at [email protected].
To learn more:
- read the Federal Register notice
- check out this Healthcare IT News article
- here's ONC's REC website