Notes from the Chairs
HIMSS 2007 starts in less than a week! The annual conference – a cornerstone event for the health IT industry – will bring great social support and economic value to the New Orleans community.
The week is full of opportunities for learning and fellowship, and we encourage you to attend the numerous events that EHRVA will be offering. An EHRVA Full Membership Meeting will be held on Saturday, February 24, at the Hilton Riverside – our featured speaker is Robert M. Kolodner, MD, Interim National Coordinator of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), who will be providing insight on the government’s directions and initiatives in the health IT arena. EHRVA buttons and booth signs will be distributed during this meeting and will be available at the EHRVA booth if you cannot attend.
Nearly half of EHRVA’s member companies will be participating in the Interoperability Showcase, where they will demonstrate how their systems work together in a live environment to share information. The Showcase will be structured as a RHIO, where attendees can create their own EHR and access it across multiple care settings. Don’t miss this chance to experience interoperability in action!
EHRVA is also excited to have our first booth at HIMSS, and we want to thank all the members who have and will be dedicating their time to help make the show a success.
We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans!
Sincerely,
EHRVA has organized several events during HIMSS and encourages its members to take advantage of all the educational and networking opportunities being offered. These events include:
EHRVA Full Membership Meeting, featuring Robert M. Kolodner, MD, Interim National Coordinator of ONCHIT
Saturday, February 24
5:30 – 8:00 pm CT
Hilton Riverside – Kabacoff Room
CCHIT Meeting with Mark Leavitt, MD, PhD, Chairman, and Alisa Ray, Executive Director
Tuesday, February 27
12:00 – 1:00 pm CT
ENMCC 297
*Space is limited, only 1 person per firm will be admitted
EHRVA Private Tour of IHE Interoperability Showcase
Tuesday, February 27
2:30 – 3:00 pm CT
Interoperability Showcase - “J” Entrance
HITSP Breakfast Meeting with LeRoy Jones, Program Manager
Wednesday, February 28
7:00 – 8:30 am CT
ENMCC 299
*Space is limited, only 1 person per firm will be admitted
View the full calendar of EHRVA events >>
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EHRVA Booth
Be sure to come by the EHRVA booth at HIMSS 07. Pick up EHRVA buttons and wear them proudly to help us promote the new EHRVA tag line:
“Advancing EHR Adoption, Interoperability and Advocacy”
The EHRVA booth will be located in Lobby I, Booth #8, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
The booth allows us to educate the HIMSS audience on how EHRVA is advancing EHR adoption, interoperability and advocacy.
Information about EHRVA will be available at the booth, but please take time in your conversations to help us educate others about our efforts. You can use the following talking points to provide a high-level overview of EHRVA:
Trade association representing approximately 90% of nationally installed EHR systems
- Comprised of EHR vendors who develop, market and support EHR software in hospital and ambulatory care settings
- Objective is to provide a unified vendor voice in promoting the rapid, widespread adoption of EHR systems to help improve the quality of patient care and the productivity of the healthcare system
- Emphasis on standards development, the EHR certification process, interoperability, performance and quality measures, and other EHR issues as they become subject to increasing government, insurance and provider driven initiatives and requests
- Membership open to HIMSS corporate members with legally formed companies designing, developing and marketing their own commercially available EHRs with installations in the US
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Standards & Interoperability Update
Recent approvals have signaled the emergence of the Health Level Seven (HL7) Clinical Document Architecture, a framework for a broad range of health information in both textual and structured form, as a key interoperability function. In January 2007, the Continuity of Care Document (CCD), the harmonization project of HL7 and ASTM endorsed by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), passed balloting. CCD represents the major features of ASTM’s Continuity of Care Record (CCR) and the HL7’s Clinical Document Architecture, and it is used for the exchange of crucial patient data such as demographics, medications and laboratory results.
CCD will enable the rapid transition of CCR content into the more mainstream Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) representation. It finds immediate application in the HITSP Consumer Empowerment Interoperability Specification, combining structured registration and medication content with the IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS), Patient ID Cross-Referencing (PIX) and Patient Demographics Query (PDQ) Integration Profiles.
The acceptance of HITSP Interoperability Specifications – including the 30 HITSP-endorsed standard specifications – by HHS Secretary Leavitt in December 2006 is indicative of a bigger picture of interoperability taking shape as a result of public and private collaboration.
- As of January 23, 2007, Leavitt has accepted version 1.2 of the HITSP Interoperability Specifications.
- The next year will be split between a period of implementation framing and actual implementation to assess for revisions.
- Assuming progress is made as planned, version 2.0 of these Interoperability Specifications is expected to be recognized in December 2007.
- The effective implementation date for the standards will be January 2008.
- The HITSP Interoperability Specifications are anticipated to manifest in federal procurement requirements by the end of 2007.
The HITSP-endorsed standards will be demonstrated in EHRs from many EHRVA members at the Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS.
Also approved in January was a first ballot of a series of claim attachments that will make their way later this year into a second wave of HIPAA Claims transactions to convey a wide range of clinical information necessary for faster claim processing.
In March, HL7 will be balloting updates to six documents developed by the Attachments Special Interest Group that are of special interest to EHR vendors. These "Additional Information Specifications" specify how to use the HL7 CDA Release 2.0 standard to respond to queries for additional information during claims processing. These guides were recently updated to support the CDA Release 2.0 standard as a result of comments made during the Notice of Proposed Rule Making process. Upon completion of the ballot, these specifications are expected to be named in pending regulation under HIPAA. If this occurs, organizations that respond to claims attachment requests electronically would eventually need to use the HL7 CDA Release 2.0 specification in such transactions.
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