A Weekly Update on the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)

North Carolina HIT Strategic Planning Task Force
The next meeting is scheduled for June 1 from 9:00 am - 12:30 pm. The Task Force is expected to discuss the draft strategic plan for HIT in NC. All meetings are opened to the public. You are encouraged to arrive early, as seating is very limited. For further details, visit http://ncrecovery.gov/calendar/publicMeetings.aspx. The public comment period on the draft strategic plan will follow the meeting on June 1.

NCHICA Submits Comments on Breach Notification Regulations
On April 17, HHS issued guidance specifying the technologies and methodologies that render protected health information unusable, unreadable or indecipherable to unauthorized individuals, as required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed as part of ARRA. This guidance relates to two forthcoming breach notification regulations – one to be issued by HHS for covered entities and their business associates under HIPAA (Sec. 13402 of HITECH) and one to be issued by the Federal Trade Commission for vendors of personal health records and other non-HIPAA covered entities (Sec. 13407 of HITECH). The NCHICA comments were prepared by the NCHICA Privacy & Security Officials Workgroup -- many thanks especially to Judy Beach, Clyde Hewitt, Doc Muhlbaier, Doug Petticord, Larry LaBanc, Curt Martin and JT Moser. Click here to read the comments.

National ARRA Activities

Distributions of Physicians in NC
Thanks to NCHICA member Patagonia Health, we have a picture of the physician community in NC that will be useful in developing ARRA stimulus strategies for HIT and HIE:

Source: Patagonia Health & AMA data from Physicians Characteristics and Distribution in the U.S., 2006 edition, Table 5.20 (pg 332) and Table 3.7 (pg 128). Non Ambulatory Care includes Hospital-based, Research, Teaching, Admin and other unclassified physicians. AMA data excludes "Address Unknown" physicians. Physician practice ratios extrapolated from Table 2, pg. 53 of New England Journal of Medicine, 359:1, July 3, 2008, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/359/1/50.pdf.

ONC Releases Report on the $2B for HIT & HIE
As required by the HITECH portion of HR-1 ARRA stimulus funding, ONC has released a brief report indicating some of the strategic directions they will be taking to allocate the $2B funding for HIT and HIE (dollars are in millions):

• Privacy and Security: $24.285
• NIST: $20
• Regional HIT Exchange: $300
• Unspecified: $1,655.715

What is striking is that there is still $1.656B in the as yet "unspecified" category. Their current staff of 30 individuals is very busy in finalizing the plans so that states like NC can develop their strategies for applying for funding through a competitive grant process. The Governor's HIT Strategic Planning Task Force and NCHICA's NC HIE Council committees are laying an important foundation to position NC to respond to the anticipated Requests for Proposals. Click here to read the full report.

ONC Recovery Plan
The ONC Recovery Plan is posted at: http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/program-plan&program_id=5299. Additionally, a notification for funding availability for the regional extension center grants will be published by the end of FY 2009. Awards are anticipated to be made in early FY 2010.

Teaming Opportunities
NCHICA has been asked about potential teaming opportunities to submit proposals in response to government Requests for Proposals. NCHICA welcomes such inquiries from members that are aligned with the NCHICA mission and lead to standards-based solutions that benefit the broad range of NCHICA members and the healthcare sector. The NCHICA Development Committee has established a process and format for submitting ideas for consideration. Click here to download the proposal submittal outline.

NC HIE Council Committees

• The Policy Development Committee will meet in collaboration with the Privacy and Security Officials Workgroup and the NCHICA Legal Workgroup on May 27 from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm. This session will be led by a representative of the NC HIT Strategic Planning Task Force to obtain feedback from these groups on the preliminary privacy and security provisions of the draft strategic plan under development. Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to mary@nchica.org if you plan to attend.
• The Technical & Operations Committee continues to refine the white paper entitled A Proposed Architecture for Statewide HIE Capability for the State of NC. The committee met on May 20 to review the public comments received. The Technical & Operations Committee has a work session and lunch scheduled for June 3 from 11:00 am - 1:00 pm. Please RSVP to mary@nchica.org if you plan to attend. The next version of the white paper will be delivered as part of the public comment period to the NC HIT Strategic Planning Task Force after June 1.
• The Finance & Administration Committee is re-scheduling its May 27 meeting to be able to provide comments on the financing and sustainability sections of the draft strategic plan which is expected to be issued in early June. At that time, the committee will consider some of the economic issues raised from the public comments on the Technical Committee's white paper, specifically the prospects for competition among community-based HIEs in NC and the impact that competition could have. Watch the NCHICA calendar for timing of this next meeting.
  

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