Mary Mosquera
The Health IT Policy Committee endorsed recommendations for the creation of a national database to which healthcare providers can confidentially report patient data errors and unsafe conditions they encounter using electronic health records. Reporting of safety issues would become part of Stage 2 of meaningful use requirements.
When Regina Holliday needed her husband's electronic health record to help her care for him after a terminal cancer diagnosis it didn't arrive for days, was incorrect, and outdated when he was transferred to another provider. She later used the correct record to care for him until his death.
The Social Security Administration named James Winn, executive counselor to the commissioner, as special advisor for health IT. He takes over the position from Jim Borland, who oversaw the agency's pioneering use of the Nationwide Health Information Network.
The National Cancer Institute plans to release a lightweight electronic health record designed to capture data specific to a cancer patient's office visit.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is expanding its current Medicare provider enrollment system to make it easier for physicians to register to receive meaningful use incentives.
A managed care health insurer wants to help regional health IT extension centers with their support of small physician practices that it fears could fly under the radar.
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology has named Karen Bell, MD, a former executive in the Office of the National Coordinator and an expert in improving health quality, as its chair, effective April 26.
The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments intend to test more complex health data sets and include more participants in its second "VLER Community" project, the latest in a planned series of live tests of a Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record for military community members and their families.
The Office of the National Coordinator plans to release in the next two months a set of draft standards for "NHIN Direct," an abridged set of specifications for the National Health Information Network that would give providers a simple way to exchange health information securely over the Internet.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has named two healthcare policy experts to manage its "Beacon" communities project, a $200 million grant program designed to showcase how health IT can improve population health.