business
ONC forms 2 new offices
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted June 4, 2012
The Health and Human Services Dept. Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has created two new branches.
Farzad Mostashari, MD, national coordinator for health IT, announced in May the creation of an Office of the Chief Medical Officer and an Office of Consumer eHealth.
The primary function of the Office of the CMO will be to bring a clinical perspective to all of the ONC’s activities that have clinical implications. Some of those activities will be safety, usability, clinical decision support, meaningful use policy development, and quality metrics and measurement development.
The Office of Consumer eHealth will expand on work already started in the ONC’s Office of Policy and Planning that focuses on patient education and empowerment. Programs include teaching patients the importance of health IT and how they can help ensure that their health data and information are being properly used, stored and transferred.
A national search is under way for a CMO and a director of the Office of Consumer eHealth.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/06/04/bibf0604.htm.
