IC Directors’ Meeting Highlights — February 28, 2013

Announcements

Dr. Collins provided updates on a recent meeting with Chairman Kingston and an upcoming House Appropriations hearing.  He additionally noted that a previously planned visit by Secretary Sibelius in March would have to be postponed.  He discussed a new IOM study that NIH has requested on the role of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee.  Finally, he indicated interest in speaking about the ICD meeting agenda structure at a future date.

EHRs and Meaningful Use: Farzad Mostashari

Dr. Mostashari, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), HHS provided background on his office’s efforts to promote the adoption of health information technology and health information exchange in order to improve health care through meaningful use of electronic health records.  HHS provides incentive funding for hospitals and providers to adopt and become meaningful users of health IT systems.  At this point, roughly 70% of eligible providers have registered with the incentive program and the current data show positive results from physicians in terms of benefits to quality of care.  Much improvement is still needed in the area of electronic exchange in clinical settings.

IC Directors were very supportive of ONC’s efforts to enable learning from clinical settings.  They were particularly interested in issues related to data storage, clinical decision support, impacts of health IT on the overall cost of the health care system, and patient access to clinical records.

This page last reviewed on August 6, 2015