New This Week on HealthIT.gov

In This Issue

Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap

National Coordinator Dr. Karen DeSalvo this week blogs about our effort to develop a “shared, nationwide roadmap for interoperability.” We want you to share your thoughts and expertise. In the months ahead we will issue a draft of the roadmap and it's important for you to let us know your opinion and shape this document. We have also launched a Wiki page for you to share your comments and ideas about the way forward on interoperability.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of August 11 (All times EDT)

Monday
Tune in Monday (Aug. 11) at noon for the Health IT Standards Committee (HITSC) implementation workgroup. Stay tuned for the agenda and more details.

Tuesday
The Health IT Policy Committee (HITPC) Quality Measures Workgroup convenes a meeting at 12:30pm. Watch for more details on our meeting pages.

Friday
The HITPC Governance Subgroup meets at 10am. The committee will release the agenda and meeting materials next week so watch for an update.

FEMA Releases Preparedness Report

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (@FEMA) this week released its National Preparedness Report in a bid to “provide the Nation – not just the federal government – with practical insight on core capabilities that can inform decisions about program priorites, resource allocation, and community actions.” Read the report!

Using Health IT to Control Hypertension

As we reached the halfway point in the Million Hearts challenge – to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2017 – ONC and Dr. Janet Wright of Million Hearts and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the EHR Innovations for Improving Hypertension Challenge. If you missed it last week, make sure you check out the Health IT Buzz blog for more details about the challenge!

National Health IT Week is coming

September 15 – 19 is National Health IT Week. We’re kicking it off with the Annual Health IT Week Consumer Summit. Registration will open soon, but bookmark the new page on HealthIT.gov to stay abreast of new information as it becomes available.

Open Test Method Development Pilot Program

We recently asked for your experiences and ideas to help us improve the test method used as part of the ONC Health IT Certification Program. Based on that input, we are pleased to announce that stakeholders selected the E-Prescribing and Clinical Decision Support certification criteria as the two criteria for the Open Test Method Development Pilot Program. Now we need your help with the next step: to develop innovative test methods that make the testing process more transparent, user-friendly, and real-world. If you didn’t participate in the certification criteria selection process you can still contribute and provide input at any point in time through October.

Check out www.healthit.gov/open-test-method for more information.

2015 CMS QRDA Implementation Guide

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has posted a Quality Reporting Document Architecture (QRDA) guide which contains CMS supplemental implementation guides to the HL7 Implementation Guide for CDA Release 2: Quality Reporting Document Architecture, Category I, DSTU Release 2, Draft Standard for Trial Use—July 2012 (and its updates) and the HL7 Implementation Guide for CDA Release 2: Quality Reporting Document Architecture, Category III, DSTU Release 1, November 2012 and its updates.

The guide combines business requirements and information from three previously published CMS guides and has been updated for the 2015 reporting year. Combining the guides into a single document provides a unified resource for implementers. Most importantly, combining guides harmonized discrepancies among earlier versions of the CMS QRDA guides, especially between the QRDA-I guides for the Eligible Professional (EP) programs and Hospital Quality Reporting (HQR).

The guide is located on the CMS' eCQM library page @ http://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EHRIncentivePrograms/Downloads/QRDA_EP_HQR_Guide_2015.pdf