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Written by Mary Stevens
The final rule for Stage 1 meaningful use has been published in the Federal Register, marking “the end of just one part of the first cycle that is the first stage of meaningful use,” said Karen Trudel, deputy director of the Office of E-Health Standards & Services at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, speaking at the July 27 meeting of the Health IT Standards Committee. “We’re moving away from a totally completely a policy development process to one that is a mixture of policy and operations,” she said.
The Clinical Quality Workgroup of the Health IT Standards Committee under the Department of Health and Human Services is now in a “hibernation period," said Janet Corrigan, MD, chair and president of the National Quality Forum, speaking at the HIT Standards Committee's July meeting.
The healthcare landscape has changed a lot since Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN), the first statewide health information exchange (HIE) in the U.S., went live in the spring of 2007, says Gina Perez, MPA, the DHIN executive director. Perez, who also serves on the Department of Health and Human Services' Health IT Standards Committee, recently spoke with CMIO about these changes and what’s next for DHIN.
Written by Jeff Byers
Without governance, the National Healthcare Information Network (NHIN) exchange cannot expand beyond specific categories of participants because these are currently limited by legal guidance, stated Mary Jo Deering, PhD, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s Office of Policy and Planning, NHIN Policy and Governance during her presentation on NHIN governance at the Health IT Standards Committee meeting this week.
The Enrollment Workgroup of the Health IT Policy and Standards Committees has opened its blog page for public input on standards for enrollment in health and human services programs, the Workgroup announced yesterday.
Written by Justine Cadet
ATLANTA—Whether enough is being done to protect the rights of patient data, while simultaneously allowing for health information to be exchanged amongst care providers under the proposed meaningful use definitions, became an area of contention during today's Meaningful Use Town Hall discussion during the CIO Forum, co-hosted by CHIME and HIMSS, at the HIMSS10 conference.
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Privacy & Security Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on an initial set of standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for EHRs for the interim final rule (IFR) of meaningful use.
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) are encouraging public comment on the two regulations issued Dec. 30 that lay a foundation for meaningful use of certified EHR technology. The regulations will help implement the EHR incentive programs enacted under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
CIOs are concerned about their ability to implement the standards recommended by the Health IT Standards Committee in time to meet currently established deadlines, according to a recent survey conducted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).
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The problem of developing security mechanisms needed for management protocols and policy management of personal health information (PHI) remains largely unsolved, according to Gerald Masson, PhD, director of the John Hopkins University Information Security Institute, who spoke at an assembly hearing of the Health IT Standards Committee on Nov. 19.
Current interoperabilty information security standards limitations for health IT include minimum encryption standards, which are not being met by many of the 7,000 contributing entities, according to Michael Mellor, chief information security officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) is transitioning its timelines to adapt to new requirements specified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), as well as the still-emerging work of the Office of the National Coordinator and its committees.
Members of the Health IT Standards Committee, established to advise the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), said it would create three work groups to pursue that agenda in the areas of clinical operations, clinical quality and privacy and security.
Friday, July 30 2010
Friday, July 30 2010
Friday, July 30 2010
Friday, July 30 2010
Friday, July 30 2010
Friday, July 30 2010
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“We’re beginning a revolution the way information is collected, managed, used and purposed for patients in the U.S. healthcare system,” said David Blumenthal, MD, chair of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, in opening remarks at an audioconference training session on meaningful use and EHR certification last week.
In Part 1 of our closer look at the final rules for meaningful use and EHR certification standards, CMIO’s Jeff Byers spoke with David Blumenthal, MD, chair of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. In Part 2, CMIOs weigh in with mixed reviews.
The framework for meaningful use is “something that had to be done and has been started intelligently,” John P. Glaser, PhD, vice president and CIO of Partners HealthCare System told CMIO. However, the challenges of becoming meaningful users and optimizing health information exchange will require unprecedented levels of communication within organizations and among healthcare systems, he said.
The contractual obligations in the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on modifications to the HIPAA privacy, security and enforcement rules under the HITECH Act for business associates and downstream entities are game changers, according to Amy S. Leopard, JD, from Walter and Haverfield, during a webinar sponsored by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
Standardizing performance measures, with the help of health IT, will make it possible to collect the right data at the right time to support performance measurement, clinical decision support, clinical research and quality improvement, said Janet M. Corrigan, PhD, president and CEO of the National Quality Forum (NQF) during a webinar hosted by the forum on June 17.