The database, a "system of records" in federal parlance, and called the ONC Health IT Dashboard, will collect information on those organizations, as well as individual physicians and hospitals, according to a notice published Dec. 22 in the Federal Register.
"Information about an individual provider (e.g., an individual physician as opposed to a hospital, corporation or other organization) is protected by the Privacy Act," the notice states.
"Privacy Act-protected information about each individual provider will consist of the provider's health I.T. implementation information, demographic information, and contact information, retrieved by his or her National Provider Identifier. The system will not contain information about patients."
ONC will use the database to aggregate data to create national and state-level estimates of health I.T. adoption, identify participants in other HHS health I.T. programs that could be assisted by ONC grantees, and verify the integrity of grant payments made to the grantees.
Data will come from information generated from ONC grant programs or from ONC partners administering other federal I.T.-related grant programs, and from vendors that monitor health I.T. adoption activity and trends.
"Individually identifying information in the Dashboard system will pertain to individual office-based health care providers who are enrolled with the ONC Health I.T. Regional Extension Centers and/or participate in other federal I.T.-related grant programs, such as the CMS Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs," according to the notice.
