Using Information Technology to Improve Health Care Delivery

Modern information technology (IT) offers unprecedented opportunities to improve health care for Americans, promising better quality at a lower cost. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is working aggressively to promote the use of technology to improve patient safety and to allow quick, reliable and secure access to information that promotes the best possible care across the health care system.   

A key part of this broad effort is developing a nationwide health information network to enable clinicians to access an always-up-to-date Electronic Health Record (EHR) for a patient who has authorized it, regardless of when and where the patient receives care. This would not be a national database, but rather a set of secure networks based on voluntary consensus standards that would allow a doctor or hospital to immediately gather relevant information by computer network – such as test results, x-rays and medical history as well as clinical guidelines, drug labeling and current research findings – to best treat an individual patient. The information would be protected by stringent security and privacy standards.

Such a system would help consumers and patients to manage their own health by giving them greater access to their health records. It would also improve tracking of chronic disease management and provide for early detection of infectious disease outbreaks around the country. Local health information systems are already working successfully in many communities and are under development in some others. HHS is encouraging the development of these systems and taking the steps needed to ensure they will be able to communicate with one another.

About HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT

President Bush has established a national goal of ensuring that most Americans have access to secure, interoperable EHRs by 2014. He created a central office at HHS, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), to oversee this effort. ONC provides leadership for the development and implementation of a nationwide interoperable health information technology infrastructure to improve the quality and efficiency of health care and, in particular, to reduce medical errors, lower costs, and provide better information for consumers and physicians.

ONC is engaged in a broad set of initiatives to support the implementation of Health IT. For example, the federally-chartered American Health Information Community (AHIC) was created in 2005 to make recommendations to Secretary Leavitt on how to accelerate the development and adoption of health IT. On January 22, 2008, Secretary Leavitt announced that LMI Consulting of McLean, Virginia in association with the Brookings Institute will be the AHIC successor (AHIC 2.0), creating a public-private partnership based in the private sector. Together, the team will develop a two-stage collaborative process to ensure that all key stakeholders in the public and private sectors are engaged and represented.  Stage one will focus on stakeholder outreach and the design and development of governing documents for AHIC 2.0.  HHS has allocated $2 million in funding for this phase, which is expected to take approximately four months. Upon its successful completion, the second phase – establishing the AHIC 2.0 by December 2008 – will be funded by an additional $3 million. 

In addition, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) launched in 2004 as a voluntary, private-sector organization to certify health IT products.  Certification ensures that healthcare professionals can use health IT on a daily basis to improve the quality of their work.  Since 2005, HHS has supported CCHIT’s work to develop and evaluate certification criteria for health IT products.  To date, CCHIT has developed ambulatory and inpatient certification criteria and certified a substantial portion of EHR products in the ambulatory care market.