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Now that it’s public, I’ll offer my thoughts on the next steps for Don and ONC. ?Don Rucker is a good pick for the nation, and will be a great National Coordinator. ?I’ve gone on record as saying that some others are not qualified, and as many of you know – I don’t mince words. ?Don is smart, focused, thoughtful, intentional, and will make good decisions for ONC and HHS. ?I have known Don for 20 years. ?He’s got a long track record of integrity, he’s a nice person, he deeply understands the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of Health IT. ?I have no doubt that he’ll do a good job. ?He’s got a lot on his plate.
Where should he focus?
- Stay the course with health IT certification. ?I disagree with the growing meme that ONC has broadened its certification scope too far. ?Certification has one purpose: ?to provide consumers with a way to be confident that the product they are purchasing will do what the seller says it does. ?Some people seem to have forgotten (or don’t know) that some of the companies that sell health IT solutions have claimed that the products do things they do not do. ?There needs to be a process by which these claims are tested, verified and, yes, certified. ?If this program is scaled back, health IT systems will be less safe, less interoperable, less usable, and less reliable. ?#KeepCertification.
- Keep the Enhanced Oversight Rule in place. ?My former colleagues (and Don’s former colleagues) in the vendor community will disagree, as do some of the house Republicans. ?As Don will learn first hand in his initial few weeks as NC, some of the companies that have been selling certified health IT products have been misbehaving. ?In some cases, products have been de-certified. ?In other cases, there have been investigations and resolution of problems without de-certification. ?ONC is protecting the public by doing what?Congress asked it to do initially. ?The certification program is more than testing of products in a petri dish, it’s about what happens with the products in the real world. ?Surveillance is therefore a necessary part of making sure that the products do what they were certified to do. ?#KeepOversight.
- Trim ONC. ?Under National Coordinators 1.0 and 2.0, the organization was small, and focused on two things: ?policy and standards/certification. ?With ARRA, the organization grew to support the REC program, the HIE program, the SHARP program, and many smaller grant/cooperative agreement programs. ?ONC staff grew fivefold, and with that growth came the distractions of the grant programs, the expense of salaries and physical space required to support such a large team. ARRA is over, and ONC now has responsibility for a small number of grants. ?ONC should retain its autonomy (it should not become a daughter of NIH or CMS) but should now retract back to the small organization it once was. ?Grants (with the people managing them) should migrate to AHRQ. ?The policy work of ONC should focus on interoperability (much of the work assigned to it by congress in the 21st Century Cures Act), certification, and the usability and safety of health IT. ?ONC’s standards work should focus on acceleration of standards for health IT systems, through very tight collaboration with HL7 (also required by 21st Century Cures). #TrimONC ?#FocusOnCertandStandards
That’s it. ?The three-legged stool of ONC’s future success. ?On a silver platter, for ya, Don! ?Have fun! ?The people at ONC are hard-working, dedicated public servants. ?They are excited to work with you.
BTW, thanks, Jon. ?You will forever be 5.2 to me. ?Great job.
