The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are asking for industry help through an official Request for Information (RFI) in determining the current status of the U.S. health IT infrastructure, and the steps needed to be taken to further develop that infrastructure.

CMS is asking for help in several areas, including:

• Creating a list of tasks, general levels of effort, high-level deliverables and timelines necessary to form an initial national strategic framework for a national health information infrastructure. This should include details about existing products available from organizations including, but not limited to, the Federal Health Architecture (FHA), Medicare/Medicaid/Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Health IT Standards Panel (HITSP), Certification Commission for Health IT (CCHIT) panels and work groups, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT Standards and Policy Advisory Committees and the Nationwide Health Information Network;
• Convening a team of health information and quality experts from across the public and private sectors to validate a national strategic framework approach that is based on existing efforts; and
• Describing the tasks, high level types of deliverables, general levels of effort and timelines associated with developing an operations plan with sufficient information to inform the electronic reporting, transmission and collection of quality data. This should focus on utilizing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 funding to build the capacity, automating quality measurement and reporting across healthcare providers eligible for the incentives for meaningful use of EHRs.

Responses to this request should be returned by Oct. 1 to Scott Filipovits at scott.filipovits@cms.hhs.gov.