The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has created a new workgroup to make recommendations on establishing a set of high-level rules-of-the-road for organizations participating in the nationwide health information network (NHIN).
With creation of the "governance" panel, ONC wants to host discussions from the health IT community on what to include in a formal rulemaking on the issue planned for early next year.
The first meeting of the workgroup " which will operate under the Health IT Policy Committee " is scheduled for Sept. 3, according to ONC officials.
ONC said previously that it would publish a request for information in the Federal Register this month to obtain the public's feedback, but that process can take many weeks.
ONC hopes that the governance rulemaking will clear the way for many large and small organizations to use the NHIN. In the process, ONC can work through some of the remaining legal and policy questions that stand in the way of its plan to rapidly expand health information exchange among health care organizations and information exchange providers.
The 2009 HITECH Act called for a mechanism for official NHIN governance, which has been lacking.
