Charting the Course for the 21st Century: NLM's Long Range Plan 2006-2016
This Long Range Plan contains four overall goals:

Pharma: Making a Difference in Managing Chronic Disease in the new Era of Electronic Health Records
This white paper examines the issues involved in care collaboration, identifies the trends already taking shape, and outlines the value-add for pharmaceutical company participation in a collaborative care environment based on electronic health records. The pharmaceutical company that adopts and embraces the collaborative care model can become a critical contributor to improving the quality of life for individuals with chronic disease; significant improvements in market penetration, compliance and retention will also be realized.

California Can Lead the Way in Health Information Technology: Recommendations to Governor Schwarzenegger’s eHealth Action Forum
The recommendations span six key leverage points in the application of health care IT:

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services backs value assessments of health care
The AQA Alliance – formerly the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance – is developing “episodes of care,” standard sets of treatments and procedures for common diseases, he said. These will permit the care provided by one doctor or hospital to be compared with another for price and quality.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Needs to Improve Controls over Key Communication Network
Significant weaknesses in electronic access and other system controls threatened the confidentiality and availability of sensitive CMS financial and medical information when it was transmitted across the network. CMS did not always ensure that its contractor effectively implemented electronic access controls designed to prevent, limit, and detect unauthorized access to sensitive computing resources and devices used to support the communication network.

Regional health information exchanges require participants to dampen the urge to compete. But it’s not clear yet whether collaboration is more powerful than competition
With each reduction in reimbursements, increase in liability insurance premiums, opening of a new specialty hospital or increase in demands for claim documentation, the providers associated with a hospital can become concerned about their livelihoods and more determined to protect their turf. Hospitals feel the same pressures, with the added loss of business represented by patients’ shorter stays. Such an environment can make it more difficult than ever for doctors and hospitals to work together to exchange clinical information through a regional health information organization (RHIO) or comparable system.

Primary Care Informatics Working Group (PCIWG) at AMIA 2006: Updates, Challenges, and Successes in Primary Care Informatics
The meeting will consist of presentations from CCHIT, talks about CCR, NAPCI, Standards Harmonization practices.... and more. Final details should be available soon. Location: To be Determined; Date and Time: Saturday, 11/11/06, 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM