Obama, Chopra and Karp on the Hunt for HHS Enrollment Ideas

The healthcare IT landscape is shifting and a new panel commissioned by President Obama is looking to the American public for ideas to make that new landscape easy to navigate.

With that aim in mind, the newly minted “Enrollment Workgroup of the Health IT Policy and Standards Committees,” chaired by Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra and Sam Karp, is looking outside the government for input on the health or human services eligibility and enrollment process.

Enrollment is looking to build on Obama’s January call for simple, user-friendly solutions: “Improving the technology our government uses isn’t about having the fanciest bells and whistles on our websites – it’s about how we use the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars to make government work better for them.”

“What we critically need—and what these standards have the promise to support—is an eligibility and enrollment system that will make applying for health insurance and other human service programs as easy as using the Internet to pay your bills or file your income taxes,” wrote Chopra and Karp in an open letter on the HHS website.

Chopra and Karp note that you don’t need to have a background in healthcare IT to help out.  Any comments backed with experience establishing enrollment or registration programs are encouraged.

According to the letter: “To follow up on the June 14^th Enrollment Workgroup’s first meeting and public hearing and to elicit further public comment, the FACA Blog is open for comments until July 1st. Comments can be submitted online on the blog website or emailed to: judy.sparrow@hhs.gov (use “enrollment workgroup” in header)”