Every day when a patient goes to the drug store, within the course of a few questions and a few key strokes, a clerk or pharmacist can match that patient to the right electronic prescription and insurance records in their computer system.
It's accomplished with probabilistic matching, relying on five key data elements—the patient's first and last names, date of birth, address and sex. The same basic technique is used throughout the country to match patient-care summaries and full electronic health records in queries by providers to health information exchanges.
The systems used today can, when properly implemented, “achieve extraordinarily high” rates of accurate matching, said Lee Stevens, policy director for the state health information exchange program within HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
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Does the federally sponsored Direct messaging protocol pose an existential threat to vendors of health information exchange software? Time will tell, according to the author of a new market research report on health information exchanges.
Time will tell, according to the author of a new market research report on health information exchanges. But Direct is definitely producing anxiety among firms selling software that's designed to be used in more complex types of health information exchange—the long-sought “query-and-response” style of information swapping that has yet to achieve widespread adoption through the industry despite extended federal efforts.
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A federally chartered special work group with representatives from three federal agencies has submitted its draft recommendations on establishing a regulatory framework for health IT.
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Mostashari
Federal health information technology policymakers plan to establish a voluntary program for the testing and certification of electronic health-record systems used by long-term care, post-acute care and behavioral health providers.
Congress, in drafting legislation creating the EHR incentive program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that helped hospitals and office-based physicians buy tested and certified EHRs, did not include long-term care and behavioral health facilities, even though nearly a third of Medicare patients discharged from acute-care hospitals go to post-acute-care settings.
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There has been significant progress in getting health information technology systems to talk to one another, according to a new study on interoperability by HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
The study, “Hospital Electronic Health Information Exchange Grew Substantially in 2008-12,” was published in the August issue of the policy journal Health Affairs. The report was written by five ONC staffers, including the lead author, Michael Furukawa, director of the ONC's Office of Economic Analysis, Evaluate and Modeling, and contributor Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the ONC chief.
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So far, members of a trade group of health information technology developers like some of what they see in a federal health IT safety initiative that focuses on quantifying any adverse impacts their software is having on patients. But these vendors are withholding final judgment until more plan details are unveiled.
On July 2, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS released its 50-page Health Information Technology Patient Safety Action and Surveillance Plan that creates an infrastructure to collect and analyze data about health IT-related patient safety events.
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Mostashari
CMS officials pushed back Wednesday on Republican suggestions that a pause is needed in the electronic health-record incentive program.
“A pause in the program would stall the progress that's been hard fought,” Dr. Farzad Mostashari, national coordinator for health information technology, said at a Wednesday hearing on the program by the Senate Finance Committee.
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