Welcome to the Health IT Buzz Blog, a service of HHS’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). This blog was created to answer your questions about the nation’s transition to electronic health records and to create a conversation about the challenges and successes health care providers, physicians, practices, and organizations are experiencing as they transition from paper to electronic health records.
Latest Buzz Posts
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Understanding the Patient Experience to Improve Patient Access to Medical Records
Melissa Crawford is a mother from Concord, NH. Her two year old daughter, Ava, has a congenital heart defect and was recently diagnosed with epilepsy. Melissa loves Ava’s physician’s patient portal since it allows her to easily book appointments and refill Ava’s medications online. But when Ava’s pediatrician needed medical records from Ava’s five specialists, the various patient portals did not provide all the health information the doctor needed. Melissa set off on a stressful and complicated journey to gather the information from the five specialists in time for Ava’s appointment with her pediatrician.
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Join Us At the Trusted Exchange Framework & Common Agreement Kick Off Meeting on July 24
The 21st Century Cures Act, (Cures) a bipartisan, comprehensive law, supports the discovery, development, and delivery of new treatments to maintain America’s global status in biomedical innovation. Cures calls for innovation in the seamless exchange of health information and lays out a path and timeline to develop or support a trusted exchange framework and common agreement to achieve full network to network exchange of health information. Cures calls on the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to advance that seamless exchange of health information, and ONC is working collaboratively to implement the trusted exchange framework and common agreement provisions in Cures.
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A First Step to Diversify the Certification Program’s Testing Portfolio
Two years ago the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) published a notice in the Federal Register (and accompanying blog post) that restated the ONC Health IT Certification Program’s (Program’s) open policy regarding the submission of testing methods for approval under the Program.
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Trusted Content from Healthfinder.gov Can Improve Patient Portals
The ONC Patient Engagement (PE) Playbook was created by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to help healthcare professionals use health information technology (health IT) to provide better care to patients. The PE Playbook focuses specifically on electronic health record (EHR) patient portals, which allow both patients and healthcare teams, concurrent with patients’ privacy preferences, to easily access patient health information — which may lead to increased benefits for healthcare, such as improved health outcomes and lower costs.
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One if by Land, Two if by API
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has updated the Certified Health IT Product List’s (CHPL) landing page. The update includes several enhancements making it easier to access data about 2014 Edition and 2015 Edition certified health IT products. Below the main search box, we have added (and will continue to add) resource shortcuts that quickly take you to specific information within the CHPL.
