HIE Rundown – 9-28-21

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 The Incrementalist host Dr. Nick van Terheyden, aka Dr. Nick, talks to Jay Sultan the VP of Strategy for the Healthcare business LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Their discussion covers the Interoperability final rules from CMS and ONC and the significance of APIs.

News and Noted

ONC and The Sequoia Project Release Common Agreement Elements
The Sequoia Project (@SequoiaProject), selected by the ONC as the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE) to support the implementation of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), released Elements of the Common Agreement for stakeholder feedback. The RCE will host a series of webinars to provide a forum for robust discussion of key policy issues.

EHNAC supports the CARIN Alliance App Registration IG
EHNAC (@EHNAC) is strategically working with organizations who have gained TDRAAP certification/accreditation to demonstrate how this program allows them to meet the recommendations set forth in this new and important document. EHNAC supports the CARIN Alliance (@carinalliance) App Registration IG by integrating the requirements to assure conformance in the TDRAAP Programs. Even the new recommendations for the CARIN IG for Blue Button are being included in the 2022 criteria release. Additionally, the requirement to meet the requirements outlined in the CARIN Alliance App Registration IG is being integrated into other EHNAC Programs as applicable by 2022.

Dicom Systems Selected by UC San Diego Health to Manage Imaging Ecosystem
Dicom Systems (@dcmsys), an enterprise imaging solutions company that simplify IT workflows and interoperability, announced that they have been selected by UC San Diego Health to help create seamless interoperability across their imaging ecosystem. This initiative will help transform imaging workflows and the backend infrastructure supporting them, ensuring health data is fully integrated, encrypted, and instantly accessible across the enterprise.

Vyne Medical Acquires Ahana Health and its Connected Care Solution to Support Collaboration in Patient Care Planning and Delivery
Vyne Medical (@VyneMedical), a provider of health information exchange and electronic healthcare communication management solutions, announced the acquisition of Ahana Health and its connected care technology. Designed to empower groups of clinicians to collaborate in delivering high-quality care to patients, the solution will be incorporated into Vyne Medical’s cloud-based Refyne™ platform.

Product News

InterSystems IRIS® FHIR® Accelerator Service Enables Easy Data Retrieval and Storage of Healthcare Data
InterSystems (@InterSystems), a creative data technology provider dedicated to helping customers solve the most critical scalability, interoperability, and speed problems, announced the release of InterSystems IRIS® FHIR® Accelerator Service. A fully managed, enterprise-grade server for HL7® FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), it provides developers an easy, secure, and scalable repository for storing and sharing healthcare data for their applications.

CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule Compliance

ZeOmega’s HealthUnity® Platform Achieves Compliance Certification to Meet U.S. Health Interoperability Standards
ZeOmega Inc. (@ZeOmega), a company of integrated, whole-person population health management (PHM) solutions, has achieved certification from Drummond Group for its interoperability platform, HealthUnity®. Drummond’s Payer and Patient Access Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR®) Application Programming Interface (API) certification is powered by Touchstone and is the only independent testing and certification program certifying interoperability and compliance using the standards established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule.

Events

NRHI/SHIEC
When: September 30, 2021  2:00 – 3:30 pm ET
Register for this event.

Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) and Interoperability Learning Lab Series Session #3 – In this third session, Sara Singleton from NASDOH will provide a SDoH focused policy briefing. Additionally, Waldo Mikels-Carrasco of the Indiana Health Information Exchange and Jennifer Faries of MyHealth Access Network will share the results and key takeaways of SHIEC’s recent national survey of HIEs aimed at assessing how they are using SDoH data.

HL7

HIMSS New England

CORHIO

To Read

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.

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.

A Successful 2021 SHIEC Annual Conference!
SHIEC thanks everyone who participated in the 2021 SHIEC Annual Conference! They would like to extend a special thank you to all of our conference sponsors for their assistance in making it such a successful event. Please note that all Conference Registrants will have access to the virtual platform and can view recordings of all sessions for the next year. View the 2021 SHIEC Achievement Awards.

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 Announces Clinical Interoperability Intensive for Health Plans and Payers
The Sequoia Project has launched a special edition of its popular information blocking compliance boot camp program, targeted for health plans and payers. Clinical Connections: A 7-Week Interoperability Intensive for Health Plans will provide an in-depth study of the Information Blocking Final Rule issued by the U.S. Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). It will help attendees understand potential opportunities and obligations associated with this rule and how to use it effectively to achieve data access. The curriculum also will explore CMS’ rules that affect health plan access to and use of clinical data, and how these relate to the ONC Final Rule.

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.

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 news feed.

Interoperability Institute

The Interoperability Institute (IOI) (@TheInteropInst) is designed to provide the products, services, leadership, and workforce to bring advanced interoperability solutions to the Health IT market. For stakeholders invested in health and social outcomes, this means less fragmented, more resource efficient ecosystems that seamlessly share electronic information for public benefit. For consumers, this means greater continuity of care across providers, health systems, and geographies among a myriad of other benefits that stretch beyond healthcare. Read their news feed.

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.