I recently wrote a post how it’s not easy to compare ONC’s spending plans with what it actually did. That’s not the case with ONC’s Budget Performance Measures. Its Performance Measure dashboard makes those comparisons easy and understandable. For example, you can look up EHR adoption among office based physicians.
Here’s how to use it. On the dashboard page, Figure I, select a general area using the radio buttons. Depending on your choice, the system will list specific issues. You select the one you want from the drop down menu on the right. You can also adjust the period covered. Right clicking a graph downloads it.
Figure I – ONC Dashboard Menu
It’s in the graph that the dashboard excels. It clearly shows targets and results. For example, Figure II shows that while office EHR adoption has grown over the years, it’s running below ONC’s goals. If you’d only saw the actual – which is the case with ONC’s budget — you’d only see adoption going up. You’d have no clue ONC’s goal wasn’t met.
Figure II – ONC Primary Care Adoption
These dashboards give the public a way to understand what ONC wants to do and how well — or not so well — its done toward its goals. In doing so, ONC has given us a scoreboard that not only measures what it’s doing, but it also allows the public to focus on benchmarks. ONC’s fiscal reporting isn’t the clearest, but with these dashboards they’ve done themselves well.