Government Expands Role in Health IT

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took another step to beef up information technology in healthcare security by announcing the creation of a Chief Privacy Officer position for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Mandated under last year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Joy Pritts, an attorney and professor at Georgetown University was named to the position. Pritts, who conducted research for the school on the topics of medical information privacy and patient access to medical data, will be tasked with increasing the role of cybersecurity in healthcare and health information technology.

Meanwhile, the White House this week called for the creation of a government-wide task force to increase coordination of health IT between the federal departments that are carrying out plans to digitize the country’s healthcare system. In a memo from Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzsag to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Orzsag called for better support and coordination of IT infrastructure to in order to maintain effective implementation of last year’s stimulus package.

Kevin Fickenscher, MD

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