Health IT collaborative releases patient engagement guide

Posted: November 19, 2012 - 2:00 pm ET

Healthcare providers wanting a recipe to follow to improve patient engagement within their organizations can start by looking over the Patient Engagement Framework released by the National eHealth Collaborative.

“We are at a critical moment when patient engagement is becoming increasingly important given the movement toward meaningful use and accountable care,” said the collaborative's CEO Kate Berry in a news release. “We as individuals should be more engaged in managing and improving our own health. This framework is intended as a guide organizations can aspire to as they move in this direction.”

The framework follows the current and future stages of “meaningful use” of electronic health-records systems that are part of the federal EHR incentive payment program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The collaborative is the Washington, D.C.-based public-private partnership created as a successor to the American Health Information Community, which was created during the presidency of George W. Bush to advise the federal government on health IT policy. The AHIC was replaced by the Health IT Policy Committee as the chief HHS health IT policy advisory body after passage of the ARRA in 2009.