ONC Releases Draft 2020-2025 Federal Health IT Strategic

The Office for the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), along with more than 25 federal organizations, have released a draft 2020-2025 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan for public comment. The draft plan outlines federal health IT goals and objectives, aiming to ensure that patients have access to their digital health data to help enable them to manage their health and shop for care, federal officials stated.

“The draft federal strategic plan supports the provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act that will help to bring electronic health information into the hands of patients through smartphone applications,” Don Rucker, M.D., National Coordinator for Health IT, said in a statement. “We look forward to public comment to help guide the federal government’s strategy to have a more connected health system that better serves patients.”

The 28-page plan’s goals, according to ONC officials, are deliberately outcomes-driven, with objectives and strategies focused on using health IT as a catalyst to empower patients, lower costs, deliver high-quality care, and improve health for individuals, families, and communities. “ONC and its federal partners have taken and will continue to take steps to ensure that stakeholders in the healthcare sector benefit from the electronic access, exchange, and use of health information,” the agency stated.

To this end, the core four areas that the plan emphasizes are: promoting health and wellness; enhancing the delivery and experience of care; building a secure, data-driven ecosystem to accelerate research an innovation; and connecting health data through an interoperable health IT infrastructure.

When creating the strategic plan, ONC officials noted that increasing healthcare spending—national health expenditures were about $3.5 trillion in 2017 and are projected to reach more than $5.3 trillion by 2025—coupled with poor outcomes—were core drivers for change, and that a digital health system offers great opportunity to improve.

In previous iterations of its federal strategic plans, ONC originally focused on the adoption of health IT systems, such as electronic health records (EHRs), while then moving to a plan that focused on improving the health and well-being of individuals and communities. Going forward, the emphasis will be on empowering patients and giving them easier access to their health data.

The federal agencies that helped to create the draft strategic plan regulate, purchase, develop, and use health IT to help deliver care and improve patient health, ONC officials pointed out. Examples of this include:

• Electronic health records and patient portals through programs like Medicare and Medicaid at CMS, and health service programs at the Indian Health Service, Veterans Administration, and the Department of Defense,

• Data systems to help monitor and pay for healthcare services, and

• Health IT systems used for public health surveillance and research.

“The Federal Health IT Strategic Plan represents the work being done, collectively and individually, to help ensure that patients and their providers can electronically access the health information they need to help them manage their care,” said Lauren Thompson, interoperability director for the Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization Program Office. “We are looking for public comment about ways to expand the use of health IT to help improve the quality of care for people, so that those currently serving in or retired from the armed forces can benefit from a great care delivery experience, along with all other Americans.”

Officials noted that the final 2020-2025 strategic plan will serve as a roadmap for federal agencies and drive private sector alignment. Agency officials will use it to prioritize resources, align and coordinate efforts across agencies, signal priorities to the private sector, and benchmark and assess change over time.

Stakeholders have until March 18 to publicly comment on the plan.