Authors

Steven Posnack

Portrait of Steven Posnack

Steven Posnack serves as the Deputy National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Prior to this role he served as executive director of the Office of Technology. In this role, Mr. Posnack advises the national coordinator, leads the ONC Health IT Certification Program, and directs ONC’s standards and technology investments through the ONC Tech Lab, which organizes its work into four focus areas: pilots, standards coordination, testing and utilities, and innovation. He led the creation of the Interoperability Standards Advisory, the redesign of ONC’s Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL), created the Interoperability Proving Ground, and developed the C-CDA Scorecard.

Prior to serving as the director of the Office of Standards and Technology, Mr. Posnack led ONC’s federal policy division within the Office of Policy and Planning from 2010 to 2014. In this capacity, he led ONC’s regulatory affairs, legislative analysis, and several federal policy development and coordination activities. From 2005 to 2010, he served as a senior policy analyst within ONC’s Office of Policy and Research. In that position, he co-authored the Nationwide Privacy and Security Framework for Electronic Exchange of Individually Identifiable Health Information. He also led a cross-HHS policy team that worked with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as it developed its regulation for the electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS).

Mr. Posnack earned a Bachelor’s degree in computer science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a Master’s degree in security informatics from Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, and a Master’s degree in health policy from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He also maintains a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certificate.

Steven Posnack's Latest Blog Posts

E Pluribus Unum

Steven Posnack | August 5, 2022

As our nation transitions to a digital healthcare system, our stakeholders are discovering new opportunities for using health information technology to advance health care delivery, public health, and research to improve people’s lives. The federal government is no exception in this regard; agencies across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are beginning to leverage the data and capabilities available through electronic health records for a broad range of federal activities and programs, including product safety and surveillance,

Read Full Post.

Information Blocking and the President’s FY23 Budget for ONC

Steven Posnack | May 24, 2022

While the federal government’s budget planning processes may have a certain mystique to them, some interesting tidbits are always in federal agency budgets if you know where to look. Fear not, because this blog post highlights a new legislative proposal associated with information blocking that’s been put forward by the Biden-Harris Administration for HHS. Specifically, the Administration has requested that Congress provide HHS with the authority to issue binding “advisory opinions” for the information blocking regulations as part of our implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act).

Read Full Post.

ONC Turns 18

Steven Posnack | April 27, 2022

On April 27, 2004, President Bush signed Executive Order (EO) 13335 and created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). Like tapping that first domino, this single action is a key moment in United States health IT history. Nearly two decades later, US policy and technology leadership in health IT is world-renowned.

Read Full Post.

Today’s the day for Project US@

Steven Posnack | January 7, 2022

Earlier today we announced the release of the Project US@ (“Project USA”) Technical Specification Final Version 1.0 and thereby completed our one year goal to coordinate the creation of a health care specification that could be used across the industry for representing patient addresses (mailing, physical, billing, etc.). This new “tech spec” will advance the health care industry’s proficiency in recording and managing accurate and consistently formatted patient addresses and support more efficient patient matching and record linkage.

Read Full Post.

Information Sharing After the 21st Century Cures Act

Steven Posnack | November 16, 2021

When President Obama signed the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) into law in 2016, it marked a significant shift in health policy and health law. Not since the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) has there been a more noteworthy change in how electronic health information (EHI) is approached under United States federal law. Importantly, the Cures Act’s information blocking provision should always be considered in the context of other laws that speak to how EHI is shared in health care.

Read Full Post.