Workshop Addresses Integration Of Long-Term Services Through HIT

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

A public workshop seeks to promote a person-centered approach to healthcare.

A workshop announced by the Administration for Community Living (ACL) and the ONC will address the integration of long-term services through HIT. The purpose of the workshop is to seek input from stakeholders and experts on the use of health information technology (health IT) to enable a person-centered approach for planning and delivering both long-term services and supports (LSS) and healthcare, including how to improve communication and collaboration among community-based organizations and healthcare partners.

“Using health IT to support person and family-centered planning can provide a path to improving communication and quality of healthcare and LTSS, and ensuring that the individual's preferences, priorities and goals are the foundation for that plan and are addressed across the spectrum of healthcare and LTSS settings,” a Federal Register notice states. “Healthcare LTSS providers play a critical role in this care continuum. However the pace of health IT adoption and interoperable communication varies across systems.”

Workshop topics include person-centered planning and how it can serve as a focus for integrating health IT and LTSS; key opportunities and challenges; and delivery and payment reform policy levers that could be used to accelerate the development of technology solutions in this arena.

This public workshop will also provide opportunities for public comment in-person or via webcast. To obtain broad public comment, the Agencies are soliciting comments on all aspects of the public workshop topics.

The deadline for submitting comments related to this public workshop is October 31, 2014, and comments should be submitted to: personcenteredhealthIT@hhs.gov

A full transcript and meeting materials will also be available on the healthit.gov Web site at: http://healthitgov-stage.ahrqstg.org/person-centered-care.