By Staff Writer
In comments filed on Tuesday, the nation’s top consumer advocates praised the Office of the National Coordinator’s (ONC’s) draft Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap for advancing full and equal interoperability, not just among health care providers but also between providers and patients and their family caregivers. The Consumer Partnership for eHealth (CPeH), a group of more than 50 leading consumer, patient and labor organizations, filed the comments in advance of the April 3 deadline.
ONC’s draft Roadmap, they wrote, will help the nation enable and support a learning health system in which all individuals, their families and care providers can send, receive, find and use electronic health information in ways that are appropriate, secure, timely and reliable for continuous learning and improved health. This will have a profound impact in transforming our health care system into one that better meets the needs of patients and families. They also praised the draft Roadmap for treating patients and families as equal partners in the continuum of care and in electronic access to and use of health information, noting that “better care, better health and lower costs absolutely depend upon patients being equal and engaged partners.” Read the full article here. »
