WASHINGTON – The White House on Friday called for the creation of a government-wide task force to strengthen coordination of healthcare IT among federal agencies that hold key roles in carrying out the administration's plans for a digital healthcare system.
The plan, described in a memo from Office of Management & Budget director Peter Orzsag and Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, sets up a way for agencies with heavy healthcare responsibilities to participate in planning healthcare IT projects set in motion by passage of the HITECH Act last year.
The memo was addressed to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Veterans Affairs Secretary Gen. Erik Shinseki, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue and Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry.
It asked the secretaries to choose a senior leader from their agencies to represent them on the task force and to send HHS their choices within five days.
The agencies have been hamstrung from participating in opportunities created under HITECH because of an ad hoc system of councils and advisory groups through which they have done business over the last several years, the HHS-OMB memo said.
Memo refers to 'legacy structure'
"This legacy structure is not a good fit for the new environment" that includes the ONC, two federal advisory committees, as well as "increased congressional engagement and attention from a diverse body of interests in the private and public sectors," the memo stated.
It added that "fragmentation of current federal health responsibilities, programs and coordinating mechanisms must be overcome to execute effectively the president's program."
To do so, it recommended "dissolving and restructuring the existing HIT inter-agency groups to form a government-wide Federal HIT Task Force."
David Blumenthal, MD, the national health IT coordinator, would chair the task force, according to the proposal. Vice chairs would be held by OMB's health program associate director, Keith Fontenot, White House chief information officer, Vivek Kundra and its chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra.
HHS and OMB proposed the task force set up several working groups to focus on areas where it believes health IT coordination among the agencies is essential to the nationwide health IT adoption plan.
Suggestions for the sub-groups included the already-established Federal Health Architecture (FHA) community, which has been involved in Nationwide Health Information Network technology and interoperability planning.
