An HIT

David Blumenthal, MD, director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), is in charge of overseeing a number of tasks in connection with HIT, but a press conference last week showed that making strides in the proliferation of HIT will likely prove tougher than anticipated.

Blumenthal said that despite the expenditure of a considerable amount of time and energy, the definition of "meaningful user" is not be ready to roll out just yet.

Blumenthal said this definition is "the critical criterion that adoption of HIT has to satisfy to get incentives" for physician practices and hospitals. The discussion of this definition undertaken by the HIT Policy Committee was "a lively discussion and it was decided ... that we would take the discussion back to work on a little longer," Blumenthal said, adding that the committee hopes to present the initial proposed definition in about a month.

Blumenthal said ONCHIT will be "receiving public comments over the next 10 days (until June 26) and a longer period of public input" as the draft fills out. As for physicians, he said, "I anticipate we will be hearing from them" on things such as "how fast they can adopt electronic records."

Blumenthal acknowledged that the HIT vendor industry may have a tough time dealing with an avalanche of demand should providers stampede toward electronic health records in response to incentives.

"We're working on a series of programs that will enable us to provide support for" providers, he said, adding that "we'll do our best" to ensure that everyone who wants to get on board can do so.

He also said that it is too early to determine whether, and even how, EHR systems would deal with unique device identifiers, and declined to offer a fixed date for publication of a final definition for "meaningful user."