On January 24, 2009, newly sworn in President Obama uttered a bold promise: "To lower health care cost, cut medical errors, and improve care, we'll computerize the nation's health records in five years, saving billions of dollars in health care costs and countless lives." It's those words that marked the beginning of healthcare reform.
In the time since that first weekly address, a number of significant events have unfolded:
- February 2012: CMS issues a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Stage 2 and ONC releases the Standards and Certification NPRM
- Janaury 2012: Additional Meeting with ONC and CMS on Meaningful Use and Hospital-Located Eligible Professionals takes place
- December 2011: ONC's HIT Standards Committee and HIT Policy Committee-MU Workgroup Discuss Early Plans for Exploring Imaging Standards and the RBMA, ACR and Other Stakeholders Meet With ONC to Discuss Hospital-Located EPs Without Physical Practice Infrastructures
- November 2011: ONC HIT Policy Committee/Meaningful Use (MU) Workgroup/Specialist Subgroup holds conference call to discuss MU and specialized medicine
- October 2011: ONC HIT Policy Committee/Meaningful Use Workgroup/Specialist Subgroup held its first meeting to discuss gaps and opportunities regarding MU and specialists
- June 2011: HIT Policy Committee makes recommendations to the National Coordinator on Meaningful Use Stage 2
- May 2011: ACR Participates in HHS Hearing on 'Meaningful Use and Specialists'
- April 2011: Dr. Farzad Mostashari named new National Coordinator for HIT at the ONC
- March 2011: ACR verbally comments to full HITPC and MU workgroup
- February 2011: ACR comments on draft Stage 2 meaningful use measure recommendations
- January 2011: RSNA and ACR comment on ONC RFI regarding PCAST report
- December 2010: ONC announces the addition of two ATCB groups - ICSA Labs in Mechanicsburg, PA and SLI Global Solutions in Denver, CO
- September 2010: HHS selects third group - InfoGard Laboratories - to test and certify electronic health records systems for supporting meaningful use
- August 2010: HHS selects first two EHR certification groups - Certification Commission for Health IT (CCHIT) and the Drummond Group (DGI)
- July 2010: CMS and ONC released final rules implementing Stage 1 of meaningful use
- April 2010: Congress passes H.R.4851, the Continuing Extension Act of 2010
- March 2010: The ACR, joined by the American Board of Radiology (ABR), Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), and Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM), issued a collective set of comments to all twenty-five reporting measures of the proposed EHR incentive program as it applies to radiology
- January 2010: Following the release of the IFR and NPRM, a public comment period was initiated with a deadline of March 15, 2010
- December 2009: CMS issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) which outlined three incentive programs and the provisions governing each program
- December 2009: ONC issued its Interim Final Rule (IFR), a summary of recommendations on MU which proposed the initial set of standards and certification criteria as well as implementation specifications
- October 2009: American College of Radiology (ACR) proposed topics to the HIT Policy Committee that it viewed as relevant to the discussion of radiology meaningful use (RMU)
- March 2009: Under the auspices of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), two committees were formed; the Health IT Policy Committee and Health IT Standards Committee
- March 2009: Obama administration appointed David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, as national coordinator of health information technology for the ONC
- February 2009: Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was born as a subset of the ARRA
- February 2009: Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009
