HIE Rundown – 3-16-21

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Posted By: Roberta Mullin March 16, 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 John D’Amore of Diameter Health about interoperability, its application to health plans, FHIR, and potential future approaches to extracting actionable information from clinical data.

News and Noted

Texas Health Services Authority Receives Supplemental Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to Expand Immunization Data Sharing
The Texas Health Services Authority (THSA) (@THSA_HealthIT), HASA (@HASA_TX) (an HIE in Texas covering multiple regions), and Audacious Inquiry (@A_INQ) announced new funding from the ONC focused on increasing data sharing between jurisdictional Immunization Information Systems (IISs) and Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). ONC’s Strengthening the Technical Advancement and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via Health Information Exchange (STAR HIE) Program will support innovative health information exchange services that benefit public health agencies and improve the health information exchange services available to support communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

VirtualHealth Partners with Continual Care Solutions on Transformative Strategy for Vulnerable and Special Populations
VirtualHealth (@VirtualHealth_) announced that Continual Care Solutions, Inc. has chosen HELIOS®, VirtualHealth’s industry-leading SaaS solution for comprehensive medical management, as its preferred interface for health insurers, managed care organizations, and other clinical stakeholders. The HELIOS platform will enable Continual Care Solutions to connect its imPowr™ product to a broader healthcare ecosystem, enabling bi-directional data exchange among payers, providers, and health and human service organizations.

Apervita and Diameter Health Partner to Realize a Higher Standard of Clinical Data Quality Across Healthcare Industry
Apervita (@apervita), the trusted platform for healthcare collaboration, and Diameter Health (@DiameterHealth), a fast-growing company in health data interoperability and optimization, announced a partnership to accelerate digital quality measurement and value-based care by providing access to clean, normalized, and enriched clinical data. The alliance will significantly increase the quality and volume of digital data available for quality measurements, which are often utilized for reimbursement as well as value-based contracts between providers and payers.

An Alternative Nationwide Health Information Network Has Launched to Scale and Solve National Interoperability Challenges
The United States QHIN (USQHIN) has launched as a wholly owned subsidiary of Velatura Public Benefit Corporation, which will use data exchange to scale and solve national interoperability challenges. Historically, national data exchange has been limited by the challenges of exchanging integrated, rationalized data between disparate networks. USQHIN aims to solve this challenge by closing the gap between effective local or regional exchange and national exchange and by emphasizing collaboration and honoring existing network relationships to benefit all participants.

Ready Computing Joins Healthix’s Vendor Interoperability Program to Offer ‘Channels’ Connected Care Solution to Health Information Exchange Participants
Ready Computing (@Ready_Computing), a healthcare IT services and solutions company, is pleased to announce their participation in Healthix’s (@healthix) Vendor Interoperability Program (VIP). Healthix is one of the largest public health information exchanges (HIE) in the nation and a leader in enabling innovative solutions for HIE participants, improving care for clinical providers and patients.

Senators attempt to improve electronic health records a second time amid COVID-19 pandemic
A bipartisan group of senators is taking a second stab at improving patient record matching among health-care providers — this time to aid COVID-19 vaccine distribution. Their reintroduced Patient Matching Improvement Act would make the U.S. Postal Service‘s address-formatting tool available to hospitals, testing laboratories and vaccination sites to increase correct patient record linkages across providers.

Events

CHIME
When: Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Time: 2:00 – 3:00 pm ET
Register for this event.

Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule 101 – The CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule was published in May 2020, as part of the 21st Century Cures Act. But many in healthcare don’t fully understand what it is, how to comply with it, and how it differs from its sister rule — the Interoperability, Information Blocking and ONC Health IT Certification Program. This final rule’s goal is to give patients access to their health information. They can then share this access with other clinicians and third-party apps, increasing the data’s portability. CMS begins enforcing this rule in July, 2021, yet there are no off-the-shelf solutions for healthcare organizations to use. This proposed session will share context and background for the rule, explain who must comply, what’s needed to comply, and how to comply.

National HIPAA Summit

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

Information privacy and security have gone from seeming afterthoughts for many to front-page news that have grabbed the attention of the public and C-suites alike. Health information privacy and security is no exception. Government-led interoperability efforts seek to unleash the power of electronic health information, raising significant concerns about the limitations of HIPAA and potential loss of privacy and security of the information. The country tries to tackle a devastating opioid epidemic, shining a spotlight on the role that privacy of substance use disorder information should play in the epidemic. Health care sector and tech companies unite on projects to advance artificial intelligence, requiring the application of decades-old privacy laws to ventures that once seemed like science fiction.

The HIPAA Summit is the place to go to stay on top of all of this and more. You will receive practical information to improve compliance with HIPAA and other privacy and security laws governing health information. The HIPAA Summit will bring together current and former regulators from the Office for Civil Rights, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Federal Trade Commission, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. You will hear from thought leaders and practitioners at some of the nation’s top health care systems and health plans. The HIPAA Summit will include sessions on HIPAA enforcement initiatives, new cyber security threats, opportunities to hear privacy and security officers share best practices, and lessons on what challenges are to come and how to tackle them.

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.

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 Establishes New Direct in Practice Roundtable
DirectTrust announced the formation of the Direct in Practice Roundtable to assess how Direct Secure Messaging is used and encountered in clinical and healthcare settings in a provider or care team workflow. 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.

DirectTrust Announces Implementation Guide for Event Notifications via the Direct Standard™
DirectTrust™ announced the publication of the Implementation Guide (IG) for Event Notifications via the Direct Standard™, a Draft Standard for Trial Use (DSTU). 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.

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

Case Study: NEHII Rises to the Challenge of COVID-19 with Cloud-Based Analytics and Robust Patient Matching Tools
The Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NEHII) is a leading non-profit health information exchange (HIE) serving more than 4 million residents across 300 participating health care providers, payers and the State of Nebraska. NEHII partnered with NextGate to accurately match and connect critical public health information across the state of Nebraska to support trusted data exchange and case reporting for COVID-19 using an Enterprise Master Patient Index on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Download this eBook by NextGate (@NextGate) to read the case study.

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 (@eFaxCorporate) 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.