HIE Rundown – 6-8-18

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Posted By: Roberta Mullin June 8, 2018

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.

Patient Matching

Health IT Expo Extra with Shahzad Ahmad, VP Cloud Operations and Delivery of Next Gate

Shahzad is responsible for the delivery of NextGate’s Cloud offering and 24×7 managed services operations globally. He sat on a panel on EMPI and patient matching. Patient Matching and effectively managing your EMPI (Enterprise Master Patient Index) is a challenge for every healthcare organization. However, it also proves to be one of the most valuable things you can do to improve patient care in an organization. Shahzad talks to me about how organizations can take advantage of innovations including cloud computing to improve patient matching and more effectively manage their EMPI. And if healthcare organizations really need an EMPI?

The Sequoia Project Adopts Public Evaluation and Comment for Framework
The Sequoia Project announced the results of a multi-year effort of a diverse stakeholder workgroup to examine and revise best practices for patient matching between health information exchange partners. The revised whitepaper, entitled “A Framework for Cross-Organizational Patient Identity Management 2018,” is a multi-dimensional document featuring a matching maturity model, a detailed case study and specific practices for a national patient matching framework.

Moving Patient Matching Capabilities to the Cloud: How a cloud platform can improve patient data management
The healthcare industry has long relied on legacy systems and on premise computing power to ensure that patient data was secure and the idea of storing sensitive healthcare data in a nebulous “cloud” seemed preposterous just a decade ago. Today, the healthcare industry is much more comfortable moving its data and applications to a cloud platform. Consumer acceptance of cloud offerings has grown exponentially in conjunction with universal adoption of smartphones and mobile apps, critical to their daily lives. Healthcare is following: according to the HIMSS 2016 Survey, 84% of healthcare providers are currently using a cloud service.
Download this white paper.

News and Noted

https://twitter.com/IvenixInc/status/1004743727343177728

Cerner, VA to Provide Veterans with Seamless Care
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) (@DeptVetAffairs ‏) and Cerner (@Cerner) signed a historic agreement to create seamless care by modernizing technology and creating a longitudinal electronic health record (EHR) for veterans. The VA has made this program one of its top priorities, and it is a privilege to lead this important project and work with the VA to improve care for our nation’s veterans.

The State of Interoperability in Healthcare by Luis Castillo President of Ensocare
Even as the healthcare information technology (IT) field has made strides to facilitate cooperation between EHRs (electronic health records), it’s become abundantly clear that we still have a way to go to achieve anything approaching complete and total interoperability. All attempts at interoperability must inherently begin by recognizing the starting point that makes everything so tricky: EHRs consist of a series of disparate systems built in silos that are suddenly being asked to work together for the good of the patient. Read the article.

News from the ONC
Now Available: 2018 Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) Reference Edition – The Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA), an interactive catalog of standards and implementation specifications supporting interoperability in healthcare, has been updated following the public review and comment period that ended on November 20, 2017. The 2018 ISA Reference Edition incorporates many of the comments received, and is intended to provide a “snapshot in time” view of the ISA for the new year. Additional changes and functionality improvements are planned for 2018, so be sure to visit the ISA throughout the year.

Save The Date: 2nd ONC Interoperability Forum – From August 6-8, ONC will host the 2nd Interoperability Forum in Washington, DC. We expect stakeholders from industry and government will:

  • Learn about recent efforts to advance interoperability nationwide; and
  • Identify concrete actions that can be taken to respond to today’s interoperability challenges

The Forum will feature a mix of keynote speakers, demos, and opportunities to share and learn best practices.

Date & Time: Monday August 6 (afternoon) – Wednesday August 8, 2018
Location: Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036

Spotlighting Interoperability Proving Ground Programs
The Interoperability Proving Ground (IPG) Spotlight project of the week is: EMS Connectivity.  Through their platform, Kno2 seeks to drive interoperability between the hospital and EMS agencies throughout the patient’s transport and hospital stay – impacting the quality of care, patient safety and outcomes reporting.

Share your interoperability project by submitting a new project at the IPG or update the status of a project that had been posted within the last 90 days. Once a project is submitted or updated, it will be added to the queue to be randomly selected as a featured project. Learn more about the IPG Spotlight.

News from 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.

News from 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.

Blog series on FHIR

News from 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.

  • SHIEC & Diameter Health Form New Technlogoy Best Practices Standardization Alliance
  • Alabama One Health Record Joins The Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative
  • SHIEC’s Strategic Business & Technology Partner Grows 640% in One Year

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.

eHealth Initiative Resource Center
Interoperability Files – Check out the new white paper resource in the eHealth Initiative’s (@eHealthDC) Resource Center: Patient Matching Considerations for Interoperability