Physiatry Practice Management Resources

The American Health Information Community since it was created in September 2005 has not produced many tangible results, but it has been essential in the federal government's effort to increase the use of health care technology, according to industry executives, Modern Healthcare reports.

"If people were looking for substantive, nitty-gritty resolutions, they were looking in the wrong place," said Scott Wallace, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Health Information Technology. "This stuff is really difficult. You can talk about it in theory and wave your hands around but doing it takes time. It's not simple stuff."

The group has met eight times since it was created and has formed six work groups. Four of the work groups were labeled as "breakthroughs," or short-term projects that could be implemented within one or two years, Modern Healthcare reports.

AHIC serves as "a coordinating body and a priority-setting body," said John Halamka, CIO of CareGroup Healthcare System and the Harvard Medical School. "You've got to be careful because there are so many moving parts," he said, adding, "The AHIC has been good at keeping us aligned."

Dr. David Brailer, former National Coordinator for Health IT and co-chair of AHIC, said the group is essential to advancing health care IT. "It's a receptor site for contractors to deliver their reports to the government," he said. "What's done at the AHIC is done in public."

AHIC at its next meeting on Oct. 31 will receive a short list of high-priority health care IT standards from the Health Information Technology Standards Panel. Those standards then will be incorporated into the electronic health record certification commission's work, which will impact the ambulatory care environment, according to Douglas Henley, executive vice president of the American Academy of Family Physicians and a member of AHIC (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 10/19