ONC proposes greater oversight for EHR vendors

maintenance of certification

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has taken another step toward fixing the maligned Meaningful Use program, proposing greater oversight for electronic health records certified to Meaningful Use standards.

The proposed rule, released Tuesday morning, allows the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to review certified health IT products for information blocking, and well as potential risks to patient safety and public health. It also would give ONC increased power to regulate authorized certification-testing bodies.

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“Our goal is to work with developers. Our goal is not to get to decertification,” Sherilyn Pruitt, director of ONC’s Office of Programs and Engagement, said during a press conference at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas. She said the office would like to work with noncompliant vendors to develop action plans to fix their products and practices.

ONC released the oversight proposal less than a day after HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced that dozens of health IT vendors, major health systems and industry organizations had pledged to provide wider consumer access to health data, avoid information blocking and adopt federally recognized interoperability standards.

The proposed ONC rule dovetails with these private-sector commitments. It also follows last week’s Precision Medicine Initiative summit at the White House, for which data liquidity is a linchpin.

“The president of the United States has a keen interest in seeing that data moves,” national health IT coordinator Dr. Karen DeSalvo said Tuesday. “We would like to see change [to interoperability] as rapidly as possible, but as safely and securely as possible.”