New Health IT Coordinator Mostashari Will Stay the Course

A look at the week of April 11 in public advocacy for the IT channel  

This week, the Senate finally voted to repeal the much-debated 1099 provision, which now heads to the President for his signature.  The new health IT coordinator plans to keep the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) on the same path set by his predecessor, David Blumenthal.  A new report from the Ponemon Institute shows that energy and utility company infrastructure is inadequate to defend against cyber attacks.

Senate Finally Votes To Repeal 1099 — The Senate on Tuesday voted to repeal the healthcare overhaul’s 1099 tax reporting requirements, finally ending months of debate over a provision that had few defenders. The overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, 87-12, gives President Barack Obama the first opportunity to sign or veto a bill repealing a piece of his signature health care law. Politico reports that the President is expected to sign the repeal despite concern regarding how to replace the money the provision would have raised.

New Health IT Coordinator Mostashari Will Stay the Course — Under the leadership of newly minted national health IT coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) will maintain the direction David Blumenthal headed towards EHR adoption, health information exchange and assuring privacy and security for patients and their data. ONC also will propose a governance rule to support the expansion of the nationwide health information network (NHIN) to promote sharing of patient data, says Government Health IT.

Energy Infrastructure Lacks Advanced Defense from Cyber Attacks — A majority of energy and utility companies don’t use state-of-the art technology to defend their networks and are exposing critical infrastructure to sophisticated cyber attacks, reports Bloomberg.  According to a recent report, 67 percent of information technology professionals surveyed said their organizations had not deployed the best available security to guard against hackers and Internet viruses.