May 31, 2024
Last week, the Society joined the LTPAC HIT Collaborative in submitting comments on the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) Strategic Plan. In March 2024, ONC released the Draft 2024-2030 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan. The previous strategic plan promoted a modern health IT infrastructure and drove significant progress across government and industry to advance the access, exchange, and use of electronic health information (EHI). The newly released draft plan seeks to build upon this progress and includes an increased emphasis on areas such as public health, health equity, and artificial intelligence (AI).
The Collaborative’s comments underscored that the draft plan should take into account the demographic shift where aging persons are the fastest growing segment of the population. The plan as drafted fails to adequately address the need for interoperability across all care settings. Unless interoperability extends to the entire health-care system, including LTPAC settings, the efficiencies and benefits of health IT promised under HITECH will not materialize for hospitals, physicians, or, most importantly, their patients.
The Collaborative recommends federal health IT policy and programs recognize and support the LTPAC, HCBS, and LTSS sectors, including their various health IT systems, tools, data, measures, analytics, etc.