J. Michael Fitzmaurice, PhD

Michael Fitzmaurice is Senior Science Advisor for Information Technology in the Immediate Office of the Director of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. Dr. Fitzmaurice received his BS degree in Mathematics (with a minor in Engineering Physics), his BA degree in Economics from St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana, and his PhD degree in Economics from the University of Maryland at College Park. After 15 years in the Medicare Program at the Health Care Financing Administration, where among other accomplishments he led the development of Medicare's prospective payment system for hospitals, based on diagnostic related groups, Dr. Fitzmaurice left his position as Acting Director, Office of Research, to become the Director, National Center for Health Services Research and Health Care Technology Assessment (NCHSR). When AHCPR was created out of NCHSR by Congress, he became Deputy Administrator and, subsequently, Director of the Office of Science and Data Development and Director of the Center for Information Technology. Dr. Fitzmaurice is a staunch advocate of health informatics standards nationally and internationally, supporting collaboration among U.S. health data standard developing organizations and standards users since 1990. He continues to support the work of American National Standard Institute's Health Informatics Standards Board and the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to the ISO Technical Committee (TC) 215 on Health Informatics. Internationally, he participates in ISO TC 215. In AHCPR and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Dr. Fitzmaurice actively promotes medical informatics and health services research methods to show the benefits and costs, barriers and solutions of information technology applications in health care. In 1993, Dr. Fitzmaurice served on the White House Health Reform Task Force, Information Systems Working Group, and Administrative Simplification Working Group, which made recommendations to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Task Force Chair, on the use of information technology in health care reform. He wrote the Clinton Administration's vision paper ìHealth Care and the National Information Infrastructure,î which was published by the Department of Commerce in 1994. Dr. Fitzmaurice is one of two government liaisons to the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS). He co-chairs the DHHS Infrastructure and Cross-cutting Implementation Team that has oversight and guidance responsibility for the six implementation teams that recommend health data standards for the Secretary's adoption under the mandate of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. HIPAA has also mandated NCVHS to produce a report on standards for PMRI and its electronic exchange. Dr. Fitzmaurice is co-lead staff of the Computer-based Patient Record Working Group that is charged with producing the draft of the report. He is a member of the Department's Health Privacy Regulation Working Group charged with producing a national privacy regulation under HIPAA. Dr. Fitzmaurice has received numerous awards from his agency, the Public Health Service, and DHHS. He has been a member of the AMIA Advisory Council since 1994. In 1996, he received a President's Award from AMIA, ìfor significant contributions made to the Working Group for Family Practice/Primary Care of the American Medical Informatics Association.î In 1999, he received the Future of Health Technology Award.