All posts in category Health IT Standards

The Fight to Control COVID-19 Demands Data

For COVID-19 resources for health IT developers and other stakeholders, click here.

COVID-19 arrived unexpectedly as a highly contagious disease that surprised everyone, requiring healthcare providers and public health officials to take quick action and make decisions on how to care for those infected, how to slow down (if not prevent) the spread, how to improve treatment options, and how to identify a vaccine. Yet this pandemic continues to take too many lives and affect too many more.  

To understand how to treat the patients, which risk factors make some people more vulnerable, and why it spread so fast, access to data has been proven essential. A patient’s clinical record to facilitate treating those who are ill, combined with further socio-demographic data to research and identify those at highest risk and new data to support clinical trials – all are essential to flatten and ultimately bend the curve as far down as possible. 

(more…)
Leave a comment
by EHR Association on September 9, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in COVID-19, Health IT Standards, Interoperability, Public Policy and Health IT

Posted by EHR Association on September 9, 2020

https://ehrablog.org/2020/09/09/the-fight-to-control-covid-19-demands-data/

Enabling Improved Price Transparency In Healthcare

price transparEncyOn June 3, the public comment period on ONC’s NPRM implementing health IT provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act closed. These comment windows offer a unique opportunity to gain a broader perspective on the state of the health IT industry. 

Upon our review of the feedback submitted to ONC, an overwhelming trend emerged—nearly 55% of the 2,013 comments were from individual patients commenting in favor of increased price transparency in the healthcare industry. Patients shared stories of the challenges they faced in determining the cost of treatment before receiving care, and dozens expressed the shock and financial hardship they experienced when they received a bill for their care. 

In the months since the public comment window closed, we’ve seen this demand for healthcare price transparency gain attention across the industry. President Trump issued an executive order, and the Senate is considering the “Lower Health Care Costs Act,” legislation that aims to improve patient access to price information in the healthcare industry.

(more…)

Leave a comment
by EHR Association on September 12, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Delivery System Reform, Health IT Standards, Interoperability, Public Policy and Health IT, Usability and Clinician Experience

Posted by EHR Association on September 12, 2019

https://ehrablog.org/2019/09/12/enabling-improved-price-transparency-in-healthcare/

Interoperability: Promise and Progress 

Interoperability(1)For healthcare providers and their patients, interoperability holds the promise to substantially improve quality and reduce costs, while enabling coordination of care and engagement of patients with their caregivers. As ONC’s annual Interoperability Forum gets underway, it’s important to focus not just on where we want to be, but on how far we’ve come. 

EHRA members are strong proponents of health information exchange; our members have supported hundreds of thousands of providers in their effort to exchange electronic health information through the development of interoperability modules in their solutions, and participation in industry frameworks such as the eHealth Exchange, CommonWell Health Alliance, and Carequality.  (more…)

1 Comment
by EHR Association on August 21, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Health IT Standards, Interoperability, Public Policy and Health IT

Posted by EHR Association on August 21, 2019

https://ehrablog.org/2019/08/21/interoperability-promise-and-progress/

EHR Developers are Aligned with Goals of Cures NPRM, Hope ONC will Remove Ambiguity and Reassess Timeline

Screen Shot 2019-05-26 at 9.15.33 PMWe had been waiting for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to release the proposed rule fulfilling its Cures Act obligation for quite a while. Encompassing important issues like expanded interoperability, defining what is and isn’t information blocking, as well as proposing updated certification requirements, this is an important rule to get right.

Since the release, there have been lots of discussions—public and private, online and off—about intended and potentially unintended impacts of the language in the proposal. With so much to consider and analyze, we appreciate that the request from EHRA and other groups to give us a full three months to draft our comments on the rule was approved.

The tremendously broad reach of the proposed rule goes far beyond Congressional intent.

The EHR Association’s comments are now going through final rounds of review by our executive committee (and the seven workgroups and task forces that contributed their expertise). We worked throughout the drafting of the 21st Century Cures Act with Congress and are supportive of its goal to remove obstacles to information exchange, but we have found that the tremendously broad reach of the proposed rule goes far beyond Congressional intent. In particular, we have significant concerns regarding timelines, ambiguous language, disincentives for innovation, and definitions related to information blocking.

(more…)

7 Comments
by EHR Association on May 28, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Health IT Regulation, Health IT Standards, Innovation, Interoperability, Public Policy and Health IT

Posted by EHR Association on May 28, 2019

https://ehrablog.org/2019/05/28/ehr-developers-are-aligned-with-goals-of-cures-nprm-hope-onc-will-remove-ambiguity-and-reassess-timeline/

An EHR Perspective on the Consumer-Focused API/App Landscape

By Hans Buitendijk
EHRA Executive Committee member
Chair, Interoperability & Standards Workgroup

kevin-grieve-712217-unsplashONC’s 2015 Certification Edition for EHRs began supporting consumer access to their health data beyond patient portals. Open APIs were required to enable consumer Apps to access data from the Common Clinical Data Set. Because at the time there were no standards sufficiently mature to establish as a base, the requirement allowed for access by any means as long as the technical specifications, including terms and conditions, were made publicly available to enable App developers to write their Apps on top of these APIs.

A lot has happened since then.
(more…)

1 Comment
by EHR Association on March 12, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Certification, Health IT Standards, Interoperability

Posted by EHR Association on March 12, 2019

https://ehrablog.org/2019/03/12/an-ehr-perspective-on-the-consumer-focused-api-app-landscape/

IPPS: Ambiguous Measures Won’t Reduce Burden

By Sasha TerMaat
Co-Chair, EHRA Executive Committee

man holding three white medication pills

The final 2019 IPPS rule included changes to the Promoting Interoperability/ Meaningful Use program beginning January 1, 2019. Disappointingly, with only six weeks between the close of the public comment period for the proposed rule in late June and the publication of the final rule in early August, CMS’ rushed process and failure to fully consider stakeholder comments (including EHRA’s) led to a rule filled with measures that will be unworkable, inefficient, and onerous.

In a previous blog we delved into PDMP query as just one of the measures where EHR developers anticipate challenges. In that case it’s due to differing levels of PDMP integration with CEHRT and inconsistent references within the rule about whether the query needs to be made via CEHRT, along with other areas in which the measure is ambiguous.  

In this blog post, let’s look at the reasons we’re concerned about a different measure, this one related to opioid treatment agreements.

(more…)

Leave a comment
by EHR Association on October 16, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Certification, Health IT Regulation, Health IT Standards, Public Policy and Health IT, Usability and Clinician Experience

Posted by EHR Association on October 16, 2018

https://ehrablog.org/2018/10/16/ipps-ambiguous-measures-wont-reduce-burden/

« Older Posts
Newer Posts »

  • Categories

  • Follow EHRA on Twitter

  • Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 198 other subscribers

  • Contact Us

    Kasey Nicholoff
    staff @ ehra.org

    Amanda Patanow
    Communications and Media
    ehracomms @ npccs.com