Comment Policy for ONC Health IT Buzz Blog
The purpose of this blog is to guide how to use health IT and exchange electronic health information to improve outcomes and reduce costs in our health care system.
To ensure everyone’s voice is heard and to maintain a respectful dialogue, we ask that you follow the guidelines of our comment policy below. In short:
- Stay focused. All viewpoints are welcome, but comments and links should remain relevant to the health information technology topics being discussed.
- Be respectful. Personal attacks, profanity, and aggressive behavior are prohibited. Instigating arguments in a disrespectful way is also prohibited.
- Tell the truth. Misleading or false information and unsupported accusations are prohibited.
- No spam. Repeated posting of identical or very similar content in a counter-productive manner is prohibited.
- No product endorsement. Share your experience without naming a specific product or service. Marketing or promotion of a particular vendor, product, or service is prohibited.
We retain the discretion to determine which comments violate our comment policy. We also reserve the right to remove and/or not allow comments to get posted. The views expressed within posted comments do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or the federal government.
Reporters, journalists, and other media professionals are requested to send questions to the ONC Media Office at onc.request@hhs.gov and to refrain from submitting questions here as comments. These types of questions will not be posted or answered.
We recognize that the web is a 24/7 medium, and your comments are welcome at any time. However, given the need to manage federal resources, moderating and posting comments will occur during regular business hours (8-6 p.m., M-F, except for federal holidays). Comments submitted after hours or on weekends or holidays will be read and posted as early as possible the next business day.
To protect your own privacy and the privacy of others, please do not include phone numbers, email addresses or any other personal identifiable information in the body of your comment.
This comment policy is valid for all discussions on any HHS managed forum. Thank you for taking the time to review our comment policy. We encourage your participation in our discussion and look forward to an active exchange of ideas.
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Have the recent changes in FTC regulation online changed the way the Health Info Technology does business? Do you required any additional disclaimers?
Thank you,
Michael
Centralized EHR will certainly lead to cost containment and probable decreased costs within the system. Take back pain and disc disorders for instance, there is so much waste in the system. Patients are still routinely sent for tests and images they do not need, and they are costly. Many times the outcome of the test doesn’t change the treatment protocols anyway. Big waste in back pain treatments, particularly when you see how conservative care is at least as good in outcome, usually better, and is way cheaper. Welcome changes needed.
According to your privacy policy HHS collects IP addresses as a standard part of your analytics. What other organizations does HHS share the analytics data with? Is this information shared with other state or federally run websites?
I have just downloaded Allscripts 9.2 version of their Allscripts Professional software in my office. This certifies my office for meaningful use. As we started looking at the meaningful use criteria to be loaded to the CMS web site to qualify for the stimulus money (approximately $45,000), it was ironic to me the federal government continues to speak about paper being “bad” and electronic being “good” but we have to load all of our data manually on the CMS site. The technology is there through an excel spread sheet to upload all of this data electronically. Small offices like mine (one physician and two mid-level providers) don’t have a full time dedicated IT person who works in our office. Loading data manually is a burden we shouldn’t have to bear considering this can all be done electronically. We participate in NCQA quality initiatives (diabetes center of excellence and PCMH) and they have the same requirements as you do. We have contracted with a company in Dallas called CINA and they are a certified Medicare provider for PQRI and eprescribing data pulls. Their software overlays our software and automatically pulls data for these initiatives for a small fee (which I gladly pay) and we receive our checks in the mail and we haven’t devoted one minute of our time to upload data to Medicare. Models are out there to do this. Why aren’t you using them?
I like the idea of reducing the costs in our health care system
health
I Like the latest on health technology system People become serious about health only when the problems become extremely serious. Prevention is an utmost priority and a strict medication is necessary for a better life.
health
No doubt there are various ideas but i like this idea of reducing the costs in our health care system.
To encourage meaningful use of EHRs, the Federal government will give bonus payments to doctors and hospitals that meaningfully use EHRs to improve the quality of care, reduce medical errors, and improve efficiency.
I think you explain the whole situation very well.I have no point to raise in against of what you have said.
Carl Balog
Most respected websites have these comment policies. And every visitors should follow the rules and guidelines when using the site. Anyway, is Health IT already works on all cities is US? I’m from Detroit and I’ve heard that Health IT isn’t available yet here. I’m not sure if it’s true or what. Can you confirm if it’s already available here in Detroit?
Regards,
Mike
Mike,
Health IT can be implemented anywhere in the country with proper planning and support. There are practices in Michigan that are implementing EHRs with help from the local Regional Extension Center (REC). For more information, we suggest contacting the Michigan Center for Effective IT Adoption (http://www.mceita.org/), your local REC, or reviewing the full list of RECs (http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/regional-extension-centers-recs). You can also read more about health IT adoption across the country at the health IT dashboard (http://dashboard.healthit.gov/).
Thank you,
ONC