Policy

The challenges and opportunities facing the pioneers showing the way to the new healthcare were on full display on Thursday afternoon, May 17, in educational sessions at the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit, being held at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.

Marilyn Tavenner, R.N., the acting administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), on Wednesday, May 15, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as CMS’s permanent administrator, the first nominee for the job to receive formal confirmation in nearly a decade.

On April 25, the Washington, D.C.-based center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) released a new policy analysis, entitled “Hospital Quality Reporting: Separating the Signal from the Noise,” written by two HSC researchers. The primary goal of the researchers was to help healthcare purchasers look at what has been effective in outcomes measurement in healthcare. But the implications for CIOs, CMIOs, and other healthcare IT leaders are many.

The Frisco, Texas-based Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) has announced that several healthcare organizations will require their business associates to participate in the HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) Assurance Program and submit CSF assessment reports as part of their information protection programs.

On May 6, the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based College of Healthcare Information Management executives (CHIME) issued a formal response to a critique by six Republican U.S. senators of the meaningful use process under the HITECH Act. CHIME’s leaders called for a one-year extension of Stage 2 under meaningful use, arguing that such a move would “maximize the opportunity of program success.” CHIME’s Russ Branzell spoke first to Healthcare Informatics about this policy push.