Authors
Dr. Farzad Mostashari
Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM served as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Farzad joined ONC in July 2009. Previously, he served at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as Assistant Commissioner for the Primary Care Information Project, where he facilitated the adoption of prevention-oriented health information technology by over 1,500 providers in underserved communities. Dr. Mostashari also led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded NYC Center of Excellence in Public Health Informatics and an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded project focused on quality measurement at the point of care. Prior to this he established the Bureau of Epidemiology Services at the NYC Department of Health, charged with providing epidemiologic and statistical expertise and data for decision making to the health department. He did his graduate training at the Harvard School of Public Health and Yale Medical School, internal medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and completed the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. He was one of the lead investigators in the outbreaks of West Nile Virus and anthrax in New York City, and among the first developers of real-time electronic disease surveillance systems nationwide.
Dr. Farzad Mostashari's Latest Blog Posts
Dr. Farzad Mostashari | September 7, 2012
An overarching goal for ONC is that information follows the patient where and when it is needed, across organizational, vendor, and geographic boundaries. We believe that the current state of information exchange and care coordination is far from this ideal, and that in addition to technical challenges with interoperability, the absence of common “rules of the road” may be hindering the development of a trusted marketplace for information exchange services.
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Dr. Farzad Mostashari | August 28, 2012
The CMS and ONC Meaningful Use Stage 2 rules we just issued represent a massive step forward in advancing the secure exchange of information between providers and patients to support better care across the nation. Getting the right information to the right person at the right time can be a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, anyone who has been a patient or cared for a patient understands that it’s simply not happening today.
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Dr. Farzad Mostashari | July 27, 2012
Can we really prevent a million heart attacks and strokes in the next five years? The Million HeartsTM initiative is a public-private effort to do just that by implementing proven, effective, and inexpensive interventions. It’s doable only because so many individuals at high risk for heart attacks and strokes are not being adequately treated, and in many cases, are not in treatment at all. Only 47 percent of people at high risk are on aspirin; less than half of those with high blood pressure or cholesterol have it well controlled;
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Dr. Farzad Mostashari | July 17, 2012
Last November, we released data from the 2011 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) of office-based providers, finding that 57 percent had adopted an electronic health record (EHR), and 34 percent met all criteria for “basic EHR use” (patient history and demographics, patient problem list, physician clinical notes, comprehensive list of patient’s medications and allergies, computerized orders for prescriptions, and ability to view laboratory and imaging results electronically).
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Dr. Farzad Mostashari | May 16, 2012
Today, we announced two exciting changes within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology – the creation of an Office of the Chief Medical Officer and an Office of Consumer eHealth.
The primary function of the Office of the Chief Medical Officer will be to infuse a clinical perspective across ONC on all activities which have clinical implications. Activities located in this office will include safety, usability, clinical decision support, meaningful use policy development,
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