The Office of the National Coordinator – the agency behind Meaningful Use and MACRCA / MIPS, is facing a 37% budget cut ($22M) in 2018. The National Coordinator of the ONC, Don Rucker, MD, is going to deal with that budget cut by eliminating the Office of the Chief Privacy Officer and outsourcing the HITECH-mandated Privacy function to the Office of Civil Rights, an HHS entity responsible for ensuring HIPAA adherence and prosecuting violators. In the past, the Office of the