The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is shoring up health information exchange efforts with the long-awaited release of the "Governance Framework for Trusted Electronic Health Information Exchange." The agency says the framework will provide a "common foundation" for all types of HIE governance models.
The three-page document "reflects what matters most to ONC when it comes to national Heath Information Exchange governance and the principles in which [the office] believes," Farzad Mostashari, head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, wrote in a recent post to the Health IT Buzz blog.
There are four principles:
1. Trust: Guide health information exchange governance entities on patient privacy, meaningful choice and data management in health information exchange.
2. Business: Focus on responsible financial and operational policies for governance entities, with emphasis on transparency and health information exchange with the patients best interests in mind.
3. Technical: Express priorities for the use of standards in order to support the trust and business principles as well as furthering the execution of interoperability.
4. Organizational: Identify generally applicable approaches for good self-governance.
The framework is the latest ONC tactic to support HIE governance, which also has included listening sessions and partnerships with entities to help develop interoperability requirements.
ONC originally considered issuing formal rules for HIE governance, but industry pushback convinced the office to instead provide voluntary guidance on health information exchange models.
To learn more:
- read the framework (.pdf)
- here's the blog post