Health Information Technology Adoption Measurement Framework

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)/Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) requested that RAND assist their HCIA Awardees in developing health information technology (HIT) adoption measures. The work in this guidance document is the result of literature review, consultation with experts at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), CMS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), & RAND, and 14 in-depth discussions with Awardees themselves. Because Awardees' HIT interventions are diverse, rather than simply creating a set of HIT adoption measures, we focused on developing generalizable models. These "functionality models" are based on the individual HIT elements, or building blocks, of each Awardees' HIT intervention, and are a necessary precursor to developing adoption measures. In our framework, the adoption measures are developed based on information in the functionality models. We provide examples of applications of functionality models to show how they can be used for any HIT intervention. We also offer guidance for how to use functionality models to develop HIT adoption measures for self-monitoring. This guidance is meant to serve as a complement to the HCIA Technical Assistance Webinar titled: HIT Adoption Measurement for Self-Monitoring, which was delivered on June 20th, 2013.