A Blog to Support Transparency and Collaboration

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 | Posted by: Judy Sparrow | Category: FACA

Welcome to the new Federal Advisory Committee Blog! Since many of you may be unfamiliar with Federal Advisory Committees (FACAs) and their role at ONC, I wanted to give you some background and a preview of what you can look forward to on this blog.

“FACAs” get their name from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which lays out the guidelines for such committees. FACAs are advisory and intended to provide external guidance to the government. Typically members of the group are not federal employees. They are also very open committees – meetings are held in public, information on the meetings is posted in the Federal Register, and all FACA records are readily available. At the very root of the FACA mandate is transparency and collaboration.

ONC has two FACAs – the HIT Policy Committee and the HIT Standards Committee. These committees were established to obtain outside advice or recommendations on key health information technology topics from leaders who represent various stakeholder groups. HIT Policy Committee members were selected by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Department of Health and Human Services, and Congress. The HIT Standards Committee members were selected, invited, and appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Current members are listed on http://healthit.hhs.gov. In my role at ONC, I serve as the liaison between these Committees and ONC.

In the spirit of transparency and collaboration, this blog will help ONC’s FACAs open a broader dialogue with you. In the months to come, we will use this blog to let you know about key FACA activities. Since the FACAs do not meet frequently, there will be periods when the blog is not active. I hope you not only find the information that will be posted to this blog interesting and insightful, but, above all, that you heed our call to join this important conversation.

– Judy Sparrow, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT

Tags: FACA, Federal Advisory Committee Act, health IT, HIT Policy Committee, HIT Standards Committee, ONC

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Margalit Gur-Arie says:

November 16, 2009 at 3:03 pm

Is there anyway to provide a visual cue that there are nested new replies to an older comment?

The way this is set up now, one has to go through all the comments in order to see if anything new was posted to an older thread.

If not possible, I would remove the ability to reply in a nested way and have all comments in one long queue, since each of these posts are basically just one blog entry each.

Agree or Disagree: 1 1 (0)

Au Pairs says:

November 16, 2009 at 12:37 pm

Thank you the explanation of who FACA is. I had heard of the name before; however, I didn’t know the purpose of your organization. I give my full support to the group because promoting transparency is one of the most important things an org can do when dealing with the government.

Pregnancy Blogs says:

November 13, 2009 at 3:39 pm

Thanks for providing additional info on Federal Advisory Committees (FACAs). We all need to get educated on healthcare.

Bodybuilding Supplements says:

November 11, 2009 at 9:14 pm

Thanks for sharing, and creating this new blog. We need more information about our health care system.

Aigio says:

November 8, 2009 at 8:00 pm

Hope that communication channels regarding EHR conversation will get better and better..Great job!

Agree or Disagree: 2 1 (+1)

mydealcracker says:

November 5, 2009 at 10:23 pm

I am glad to see that you are trying to make channels of communication better. Good luck with this new blog.

Agree or Disagree: 3 1 (+2)

Ed Dodds says:

November 4, 2009 at 8:51 pm

Open Healthcare group on LinkedIn – This is a group to promote the intersection of open source, open standards and HealthCare.
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/3102/63B2164D6495

Marlene Oliver says:

November 3, 2009 at 6:00 pm

Relatively simple. Take the best of the top dozen or so most efficient healthcare systems in the world, per the World Health Oorganization. This includes Western Europe “Mediterranean” countries – Italy, France, Spain, Malta, Andorra, San Marino, Greece, along with Japan, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. Copy same. Abolish the US system (WHO ranked us # 37) and install this system here (NOTE: their healthcare costs, tops, even with a high Euro vs US $, are less than 50% of costs in the USA). EXAMPLE: a PET/CT scan at our local hospital costs $4800. Japan cost: $98 (and fifty cents). Zero bankruptcies due to health care costs in Western Europe. Over 700,000 healthcare-related 2008 bankruptcies occurred in the USA. People in these countries are diagnosed and each patient is followed by a treatment team immediately – internal medicine, family practice, surgeons, psychiatrists, social workers, etc. until the patient is discharged. Their computer systems track the patient, with appropriate medical caregiver access, and physicians and other healthcare staffers give quality care to EVERYONE. Western Europe, Japan, Oman, Saudi Arabia have universal healthcare coverage. Also, EVERYONE, unless he/she opts out of the system, in writing, is considered an organ transplant donor. The maximum organ transplant wait: 3 – 4 months. Again, all of this is tracked/computerized.

Agree or Disagree: 5 3 (+2)

Federal Advisory Committee Blog « General Health Asistant Health Articles, Health Cooking, Healthy says:

November 3, 2009 at 9:20 am

[...] initial post by Judy Sparrow discusses that the FACA Blog will be uses in a spirit of transparency and [...]

Agree or Disagree: 2 3 (-1)