HIMSS, CHIME Say Part-Time Status Not Sufficient For DeSalvo
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
A co-written letter from two of healthcare’s largest organizations calls for the appointment of a new ONC leader if Karen DeSalvo continues as a part-timer.
In light of the recent administrative changes at the ONC, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) have voiced their concerns over the lack of oversight within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
In a joint letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the organizations cautioned that recent ONC staff changes “could have a detrimental effect on ONC’s role in HHS’s charge to positively transform our nation’s health system,” referring to the “exodus of most of ONC’s senior leadership” including the recent naming of National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo, M.D., as Acting Assistant Secretary for Health to help with the Obama administration’s Ebola response effort.
The letter asserts, “Health IT is a dynamic field; to successfully address the needs of patients, providers, and developers, ONC’s leadership team must be in-place over the next two years.
“Such constancy will pay huge dividends in navigating all the changes that must occur for positive transformation. The combination of skills and focus is paramount; without it, we question whether our nation can successfully address the next challenging level of Meaningful Use and the delivery reforms required in the Affordable Care Act.”
Focused on their goal to achieve interoperable, secure, and widespread use of IT to improve patient care and reduce costs, the groups urged the ONC to “fill all leadership positions as soon as possible with well-respected leaders who possess a combination of clinical training and practice, clinical and business informatics expertise, a clear vision for IT’s role in enabling healthcare transformation, and experience in public policy.”
Meanwhile, they were supportive of utilizing DeSalvo’s “unique skills to address the current Ebola threat,” but said that her appointment as the Assistant Secretary for Health could only be supported in the short term, with DeSalvo quickly returning to full-time leadership of ONC. “A full-time National Coordinator must be in-place in time for ONC’s review of all comments received from the public on the Interoperability Roadmap v1.0,” the letter reads.
“If Dr. DeSalvo is going to remain as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Health with part-time duties in health IT, we emphasize the need to appoint new ONC leadership immediately that can lead the agency on the host of critical issues that must be addressed.”
An October 28 blog post stated DeSalvo will “continue to work on high level policy issues at ONC, and ONC will follow the policy direction that she has set. She will remain the chair of the Health IT Policy Committee; she will continue to lead on the development and finalization of the Interoperability Roadmap; and she will remain involved in meaningful use policymaking. She will also continue to co-chair the HHS cross-departmental work on delivery system reform.”
According to Health Data Management, The American Medical Association has also raised concerns that DeSalvo’s departure from ONC, amidst other staffing changes, would create a “significant leadership gap which could jeopardize the growing momentum around interoperability.”