ONC and the feds

The Office of Management and Budget and the Health and Human Services Department late last month called for the creation of a government-wide task force to help coordinate health IT planning among federal agencies.

The idea is to gather the senior-most health information executives from high impact health agencies -- Defense, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Commerce -- once or twice a month to synchronize health IT plans with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. The meetings would be chaired by Dr. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health IT. So far, so good. As the proposal from HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius and OMB director Peter Orszag points out, federal agency health IT coordination has become mostly ad hoc since the advent of the HITECH Act, which set up the administration's $20 billion health IT incentive plan. Mostly overlooked in the choice of HITECH funding targets and overshadowed by the sheer effort required to set the plan in motion, federal agencies have nonetheless pursued their individual health IT business goals.