HIE Rundown – 1-19-21

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Posted By: Roberta Mullin January 19, 2021

Health Information Exchange (HIE) is happening every minute of every day. Your personal health information is moving and being viewed to improve the quality of your healthcare and lower the costs. The job will not be complete until all health records are digital and interoperable. Here’s what’s happening to make that reality.

Listen

From Harlow on Healthcare, host David Harlow speaks with Jay Anders, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Medicomp, about his company’s “universal medical translator” and its use in extracting actionable insights from EHRs, against the backdrop of changes to interoperability standards and the COVID19 pandemic.

News and Noted

FCC Announces Initial Projects Selected for Connected Care Pilot Program
The Federal Communications Commission (@FCC) announced an initial set of 14 pilot projects with over 150 treatment sites in 11 states that have been selected for the Connected Care Pilot Program. A total of $26.6 million will be awarded to these applicants for proposed projects to treat nearly half a million patients in both urban and rural parts of the country. Overall, this Pilot Program will make available up to $100 million over a three-year period for selected pilot projects for qualifying purchases necessary to provide connected care services, with a particular emphasis on providing connected care services to low-income and veteran patients.

PacificSource Health Plans Partners with VirtualHealth to Deliver Industry-Leading Medical Management Platform
VirtualHealth (@VirtualHealth) announced that PacificSource Health Plans (PacificSource) (@pacificsource) has selected VirtualHealth’s HELIOS, the industry-leading SaaS solution for comprehensive medical management, to support their more than 500,000 members across Washington, Montana, Idaho and Oregon. HELIOS will empower PacificSource to modernize their population health management infrastructure, optimize its proactive care for commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid members, and set the stage for long-term growth.

Seqster Interoperability Platform Launches on Microsoft Azure™ 
Seqster PDM Inc. (Seqster) (@Seqster) the award-winning healthcare technology company, announced the release of Seqster Platform v7.1 on the Microsoft Azure cloud at J.P. Morgan 39th Annual Healthcare Conference. Seqster is a comprehensive platform for accessing secure, longitudinal Real-World Data – electronic health records (EHR), DNA, and fitness wearables data in real-time for healthcare enterprises.

EHNAC Announces Finalized 2021 Accreditation Criteria Versions for All Accreditation Programs
The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) (@EHNAC), a non-profit standards development organization and accrediting body for organizations that electronically exchange healthcare data, announced the release of new criteria versions for its 20 accreditation programs for use, starting January 1, 2021.

Events

HL7

WEDI

The Virtual 30th National HIPAA Summit – Virtual Online Video Live And Archived
When: March 22-25, 2021
Register for this event.

HIPAA Summit XXX Features ONC Interoperability and Info Blocking Updates. Keynote address by Steven Posnack, MS, MHS.

Organizations

PATIENT ID NOW

Patient ID Now is a coalition of healthcare organizations representing a wide range of healthcare stakeholders committed to advancing through legislation and regulations a nationwide strategy to address patient identification. Read more about the coalition.

  • Patient Matching: An Essential Tool in the Era of COVID-19
    Free Recording

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of ensuring patients are accurately matched to their medical records, yet the problem of patient misidentification persists, endangering patient safety, and the public health response. Listen to the newly formed Patient ID Now Coalition during a virtual hill briefing with health leaders on July 7. They dive into the implications of patient matching and identification during the pandemic.

Patient ID Now Coalition Pleased Congress is Addressing Patient Misidentification
Patient ID Now, a coalition of leading healthcare organizations, including the American College of Surgeons, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Intermountain Healthcare and Premier Healthcare Alliance, is pleased that the U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove the longstanding ban in its Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that stifles innovation around patient identification.

The Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative

SHIEC (@SHIEClive) is the National Trade Association for Health Information Exchange Organizations. It is routine for important data about patients’ ongoing care to reside in multiple unconnected organizations. SHIEC member HIEs use information technology and trusted relationships in their service areas to enable secure, authorized exchange of patient information among disparate providers. By providing enhanced access to all available and relevant patient data SHIEC HIE members aim to improve the quality, coordination, and cost-effectiveness of health care provided in their communities. Read their news feed.

The Sequoia Project

The Sequoia Project (@SequoiaProject) was chartered to advance the implementation of secure, interoperable nationwide health information exchange. The ONC transitioned management of its eHealth Exchange to The Sequoia Project for maintenance. Since 2012, the Exchange has grown to become the largest health information exchange network in the country.

The Sequoia Project Launches Emergency Preparedness Information Workgroup for State Interoperability and Health Information Sharing Challenges
The Sequoia Project, a non-profit and trusted advocate for nationwide interoperability, is launching a new Emergency Preparedness Information Workgroup this month as part of the organization’s Interoperability Matters Cooperative. This workgroup will consider lessons learned from the response to the ongoing COVID pandemic and determine appropriate recommendations for making information more readily available to support emergency preparedness for future disasters.

The Sequoia Project Offers 13-Week Information Blocking Compliance Boot Camp Again in 2021
The Sequoia Project, a non-profit dedicated to solving health IT interoperability for the public good, has launched a second edition of its popular information blocking compliance boot camp program to help healthcare and health IT communities prepare for the updated April 5, 2021 deadline to comply with U.S. Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) information blocking and interoperability rules.

The CommonWell

CommonWell Health Alliance (@CommonWell) is devoted to the simple vision that health data should be available to individuals and providers regardless of where care occurs. Additionally, provider access to this data must be built-in health IT at a reasonable cost for use by a broad range of health care providers and the people they serve.

Slow COVID-19: CommonWell Member Resources & Initiatives
Since inception, CommonWell members have been innovators and game changers in the health IT space. Today is no different. In this time of uncertainty and stress to both our health system and our personal wellbeing, it is not surprising that their members once again are stepping up to the challenge to solve some of our world’s biggest challenges. Through their website, they will continue to share and update what their members are doing in the fight to slow COVID-19, provide necessary care coordination resources, and ultimately, help save lives.

To Read

Only the Beginning: How a Pediatric Home Health Organization is Benefiting from Connecting to the CommonWell Network – Solitary. That’s how Matthew Calone, Director of Business Operations of Solace Pediatric Home Healthcare in Glendale, Colorado, explains life before they connected to the CommonWell Health Alliance network. Solace provides in-home pediatric nursing, occupational, physical and speech therapy services for more than 4,000 children in Colorado—a critical service that can be done much more efficiently now that they can tap into records from the more than 22,000 CommonWell ConnectedTM provider organizations nationwide.

#Interop in 2021: CommonWell Members Weigh In – Last year, we asked a few of our members to share their predictions for interoperability in 2020. Of course, at the time no one could have predicted the COVID-19 pandemic and its ripple effect inside and outside of health care. This year we are checking back with those members but also hearing from a few new ones as they reflect on 2020 and look ahead to the new year. Here’s what they had to say…

DirectTrust

A pioneer in offering technical trust and confidence in the secure exchange of health information, DirectTrust (@DirectTrustorg) is committed to collaboration for advancing secure communication. As a non-profit trade alliance, DirectTrust operates not only as a membership organization, but also as an ANSI-accredited standards body, a trust framework supported by policy, and an accreditor for reliable and trusted exchange across the DirectTrust network. Read their News and Events.

HL7

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven International (HL7) (@HL7) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7 is supported by more than 1,600 members from over 50 countries, including 500+ corporate members representing healthcare providers, government stakeholders, payers, pharmaceutical companies, vendors/suppliers, and consulting firms. Read their newsfeed.

Resources

Why Patient Identity Management Tools are Critical for COVID-19 Care and Disease Surveillance
Is your organization struggling to achieve an integrated data environment amid COVID-19? Does fragmented patient information slow down your response efforts? Effective case management and reporting requires ongoing support and creative solutions for healthcare’s most fundamental problems—including oft-overlooked patient identity matching and health information exchange.

Download this eBook by NextGate to learn how to:

  • Bridge the infrastructure gaps that impact COVID-19 responses
  • Overcome demographic data challenges needed create a longitudinal

Consensus: The Chase for Interoperability
In its continued campaign to bring about data interoperability across the healthcare industry by 2024, the HHS’s Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) jointly released a set of new rules in 2019 to further promote the seamless exchange of protected health information (PHI). Despite increasing attempts to facilitate interoperability through regulations, the challenges lie elsewhere in creating seamless data exchange among a patient’s physician, hospital, labs, pharmacy, and others along the continuum of care.

Download this paper by eFax Corporate to learn more about the fastest, most cost-effective way for your organization to access and share patient data through one interoperable platform.

eHealth Initiative Resource Center
Interoperability Files – Check out the new white paper resource in the eHealth Initiative’s (@eHealthDC) Resource Center: Case Study: Remote Patient Monitoring

ONC Interoperability Pledge
Companies that provide 90 percent of electronic health records used by hospitals nationwide as well as the top five largest health care systems in the country have agreed to implement three core commitments: Consumer Access, No Blocking/Ensuring Transparency, and Standards. The ONC (@ONC_HealthIT) wants vendors to sign a pledge. Is your vendor pledging? Find out who is on the list.