During a panel discussion at HIMSS23 last week in Chicago, officials from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT gave some updates on how agencies agencies are working together and with others to help shape a “digital”. the healthcare system of the future” that works for everyone.
Andrea Palm, deputy secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who outlined the plan, said: the ways in which HHS is adjusting its approach to better serve consumers with integration Inter-departmental and inter-departmental cooperation is increasing.
“We serve families in the Children and Families Administration just as we serve with Medicare and Medicaid, which we serve in the Mental Health Services Administration and,” said Palm. Abuse of our Stimulants. “We are all the ones who need the CDC when we need it, etc.
“So the way we think about the customer experience is an opportunity for us at HHS to elevate, put people at the center and deliver services around them instead of asking people to come to programs and communicate with individual programs.”
It’s not been an easy job, she said, but the Biden Administration is “committed to enhancing the customer experience, delivering service in a way that meets people everywhere, and meeting its mission in a way that works for everyone.” more customer-friendly.”
And it’s not just in HHS. “We as an administration are trying to raise the bar even more and say, if you’re going to retire, then the Medicare problem is also a Social Security issue. How do we think about it? How does Medicare and Social Security work together?” Palm asked.
“Or if you’re a family in financial shock, job loss, something like that, it could be the DoL, it’s us as USDA with the SNAP program – there are interfaces between government where we’ve made it easier for customers to access what they need.This initiative is really designed to try to force us to think differently – better, smarter and put people at the center of what we do.”
She said: HHS has a “big business book” on government partnerships, “because a lot of what we do is service people. And so we do. very focused on HHS. We have a number of cross-departmental teams working on these different use cases that we agreed as a kind of government work that we had to pursue And we’re going to continue that work through the President’s Management Agenda and some of the other efforts we’re making to really put the customer experience first. central to the kind of work we’re doing.”
Equally important, Palm said, “and one of the things that I think we’ve specifically brought to the table in this conversation is the importance of states and local communities.”
She explained that the pandemic is an objective lesson in the importance of local public health, “in ways that we all very well understand”. “If you’ve seen a Medicaid program, you’ve seen a Medicaid program. The states are very important in the way we think about putting the customer experience at the heart of this: When you’re thinking about it. about Medicaid eligibility and how we can and should leverage existing data to make it easier for people to qualify for the programs they’re eligible for.”
“There’s a lot of work going on around the possibility that states may now qualify at the end,” Palm said. . Can people who qualify for Medicaid stay?
“It’s part of the way we think about serving our customers and leverage all our resources to reduce the barriers to eligibility and the paperwork and those that hold people back. access the benefits they need,” she said.
Meanwhile, Palm gives a nod to the health IT space, where she welcomes recent work at the National Health Coordinator on agency alignment “so that we, as HHS buyers, are really trying to leverage their purchasing power to advance the work that ONC is doing, and [promote] standards, interoperability and what we want to see in the market more broadly.”
HTI-1 focus
Towards that point, Elisabeth Myers, deputy director of the ONC’s Office of Policy, gave some updates on their own “close cross-department collaboration,” such as their work with CMS on Payer APIs.
“The Office of the Secretary has really weighed in deciding that, for now, think about investments in APIs and think about the really strong rise over the past few years – partly due to COVID, but also because of COVID. for other purposes – expanding public health services, expanding their healthcare support,” she said.
She also noted the importance of HHS grants, partnership agreements and contracts that would be consistent with policies adopted under the ONC regulation, but on behalf of HHS.
“We’ve had some really interesting work from different parts of the department that might not have been known, and now have the tools they need to think about the pieces of technology that we’re may include or we may fund it to ensure that our programs are indeed fully supported and that we are not stealing program money to pay for technology after the fact,” said Myers. speak.
“I think it’s really an impactful policy that can establish this basic foundation so that when we think about initiatives and when we think about programs, they can be more effective. “
Most recently, the ONC informed its stakeholders of its most recent announcement of proposed rulemaking, which includes several updates to the previous provisions of the Centennial Cure Act. 21 on blocking information.
“One of the things we’re doing in terms of blocking is we’re clarifying some definitions based on feedback from all of you, to try and make a few specific sections easy to understand and navigate. more for those who are putting compliance on it,” Palm said.
“We’re also revising a number of exceptions, including adding one that reflects work already done on another part of the Cures Act, the Trusted Exchange Framework and the Common Agreement, or TEFCA. – tries to connect networks together, so that data in one network has the ability to be reliable and discoverable to move from one network to another.
“Specifically in this role, we’re introducing an information-blocking modification to an exception that allows an emphasis on that use for network participants who can use it as part of compliance.” their compliance and actually trust the network as an opportunity for them to comply with the interception.”
AI can explain to clinicians
Avinash Shanbhag, executive director of ONC’s Office of Technology, spoke about the new rules focusing on health equity and explainable AI.
“One is the predictive decision support intervention,” he said. “This is our first step in looking at all of the upcoming AI machine learning models. We’re starting to take a step towards understanding how you can look at them and notice deviations in the AI models. that machine learning model.”
In the proposed rule, he said, “what we’ve done is come up with recommendations around transparency to build trust in those models. It’s a balance between making sure that change there’s something new going on, but at the same time making sure it’s trustworthy. There’s fairness and the right governance at the level where we should start. We think that’s the right balance that we’re hitting. achieved, but will certainly look forward to your comments.
“As you know, with AI machine learning models, they are built on top of some data elements – trained data – and it’s very vague. So some of the recommendations in our model. we include defining those source properties. Those are the attributes that are used by those AI machine learning models to make available to the users of those models – the vendors.”
The aim, he said, is to better equip suppliers to “start to understand what those models are. It’s a small step, but we think it’s going in the right direction to secure the models.” AI, as they are built into the future, truly understand this vast ecosystem of developers, vendors, and governments all involved in the development and implementation of new technologies. this model.”
With the proposed new rule, ONC expanded the US Interoperability Core Data dataset to a newer version, version 3.
“It includes a lot of factors that focus on social determinants of health, disability and behavioral health, and we think these are great advances,” said Shanbhag. “We feel that the industry is ready to collect, store, and exchange those elements of data, and we think it’s in the industry’s interest to be able to leverage that data to do great things.” great to be able to take care of all the people we really need in this country.”
Mike Miliard is executive editor of Healthcare IT News
Email the writer: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS.
