Time For Hard HITECH Reboot

10-point plan from former ONC official may surprise you

So, you dropped a huge chunk of change on a new IT system. Now you are frustrated and have buyer’s regret...If this is the metaphorical world of HITECH, here’s to giving Karen DeSalvo, the new national coordinator for Health IT, all the support she needs to do a full and hard HITECH reboot. More than 30 billion dollars have been spent. And while it is reasonable that many HIT outcomes are still unfulfilled, the path forward seems murky. EHR adoption has surged, but much of what has been broken about health IT in the United States still remains. And the leverage of the HITECH funds is dwindling fast.

Now there is yet another independent report, this time from the JASON group which, like the report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology before it, suggests the need for a major architecting effort for health IT nationally. The Government Accountability Office reports that there is a lack of strategy, prioritized actions, and milestones in HITECH. HIT interoperability is recognized as being limited at multiple levels. And resultantly, the benefits of HIT that depend on a combination of adoption, interoperability, and health information exchange as table stakes are elusive...