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 Healthcare de Jure, host Matt Fisher’s guest is John Harrison the Chief Commercial Officer for Concord Technologies. They discuss the evolution of fax technology and scope of usage in healthcare; tiers of fax technology and maturation of use; development of analytical capabilities to understand data in faxes; connection to interoperability.
News and Noted
Massachusetts General Hospital Lab Joins Statewide Digital Health Sandbox Network
The Massachusetts eHealth Institute (MeHI) (@MassEHealth) at MassTech has added the Medical Device Plug-and-Play Interoperability & Cybersecurity Program (MD PnP) at Massachusetts General Hospital as the next sandbox in its growing Digital Health Sandbox Network. The program boosts digital health across the Commonwealth by connecting companies to a network of innovative test beds that bolster their research and development lifecycle.
Texas Health Services Authority Receives STAR HIE Program Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
The Texas Health Services Authority (@THSA_HealthIT), HASA (@HASA_TX) (a health information exchange in Texas covering multiple regions), a local hospital partner and Audacious Inquiry (@A_INQ) announced plans to leverage the Situational Awareness Network for Emergency Response (SANER) Project for an award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. THSA is one of five organizations to receive up to $500,000 each from the CARES Act for the Strengthening the Technical Advancement and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via Health Information Exchange (STAR HIE Program) cooperative agreement program. This program seeks to support state and local public health agencies in their efforts to respond to public health emergencies, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Diameter Health Closes $18M Series B to Accelerate Vision to Improve Health Data Interoperability
Diameter Health (@DiameterHealth), a fast-growing company in health data interoperability, has announced that it raised $18 million in a Series B funding round led by managed care organization Centene Corporation, with participation from existing investors Optum Ventures, LRVHealth, Connecticut Innovations and Activate Venture Partners. This brings Diameter Health’s total funding to $30 million.
Linux Foundation Public Health Expands Technology and Public Health Community, Accelerates the Fight Against COVID-19
Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) (@LFPubHealth), the organization that builds, secures and sustains open source software to help Public Health Authorities (PHAs) around the world combat COVID-19 and future epidemics, announced it will host the COVID-19 Credentials Initiative, a privacy-preserving Verifiable Credentials (VCs) effort focused on interoperability. It is also announcing new Executive Director Brian Behlendorf, new public health commitments and membership investments and a new set of open source guidelines for exposure risk notifications.
Edifecs Launches Automated Member Enrollment Solution for Medicare Advantage Health Plans
Edifecs, Inc. (@edifecs), a global health information technology solutions company, launched its Enrollment Management for Medicare Advantage solution to streamline automation of new member acquisition and enrollment processes for Medicare Advantage Organizations (MAOs). An alternative to manual touchpoints, the solution will improve operations through workflows, end-to-end enrollment lifecycle visibility and dashboard reporting for health plans looking to automate processes for Medicare Advantage enrollment.
WEDI Announces New 2021 Board of Directors
WEDI (@WEDIonline), the nation’s leading nonprofit authority on the use of health IT to create efficiencies in health care information exchange and a statutory advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced the election of two new members to its 2021 Board of Directors along with the election of Officers and the re-election of ten previous board members to serve two-year terms.
AdventHealth Selects 4medica as Single Source Interoperability Partner to Route Lab and Radiology Data for Hospitals and Outreach Clinics
4medica® (@4medica), a 23-year trusted hospital, lab and physician connectivity network leader, announced that AdventHealth, one of the nation’s largest faith-based health systems, has selected the company as its single source interoperability partner for routing lab and radiology data to its national network of care sites. AdventHealth facilities will rely on 4medica to deliver the clinical data to primary care physicians and specialists at community practices to inform care decisions ─ and especially in a time when COVID-19 cases are surging nationwide.
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.
Lisa Bari, Interim CEO at SHIEC Participating in the Johnson & Johnson ENSEMBLE 2 Study for the COVID-19 Vaccine
I volunteered for the Johnson & Johnson experimental coronavirus vaccine because I want to do absolutely everything I can to help end the COVID-19 pandemic. I already wear masks everywhere I go, I’m not dining indoors, and I’ve eliminated nearly all socializing that doesn’t happen outdoors or online. Read her story.
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 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.
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.
DirectTrust Welcomes Amended Health Information Exchange Report from Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General
DirectTrust™ welcomed an updated report on the Veterans Health Administration health information exchange program from the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General (VA OIG). DirectTrust is a non-profit healthcare industry alliance created to support secure, identity-verified electronic exchanges of protected health information (PHI) between provider organizations, and between providers and patients, for the purpose of improved coordination of care.
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: FHIR FAQs
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.