What's Happening in Health IT

In This Issue

We are ten days out from the 2015 ONC Annual Meeting (#ONC2015 for those in the Twitterverse)! It looks like it will be a full house, with more than 1,300 registered for the two-day event that begins on Monday, February 2. If, however, you cannot make it in person, check out the webcast and follow along from your desk! Highlights of the meeting include sessions with all of the former National Coordinators, discussion of the Draft Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap and a Fireside Chat with former U.S. Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle (D-MO) and William Frist, MD (R-TN).

Office-based Provider Data Update

The Health IT Dashboard has been updated with new data from the Office-based Provider Database. This includes state and county estimates for the number of medical doctors, primary care providers, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants from 2011 to 2013. The data can be downloaded from the Dashboard's data page.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of January 26 (all times EST)

Our advisory committees and workgroups are again busy next week, convening six meetings in five days! Each will post agendas and meeting materials prior to the meeting, but for now, please follow the hyper links below for dial-in information.
Monday The Health IT Policy Committee (HITPC) Privacy and Security Workgroup meets at 2pm.
Tuesday The Health IT Standards Committee (HITSC) meets virtually at 10am. Please take a minute to peruse the agenda, a summary of the Committee’s December meeting and a Data Analytics Update.
Wednesday The HITSC Transport and Security Standards Workgroup meets at 3pm.
Thursday The HITSC Architecture, Services and APIs Workgroup meets at 2pm.
Friday The HITPC Advanced Health Models and Meaningful Use Workgroup meets at 11am and is followed by the HITSC S&I Task Force, which convenes at 1:30pm.

eCQI Resource Center Launch Demo

Get ready! The Electronic Clinical Quality Improvement (eCQI) Resource Center is going live the week of February 2. The website will provide a centralized location for critical quality resources, including the electronic clinical quality measures and their specifications, links to tools for measure development, testing, and clinical decision support (CDS). The resource center will help to connect related activities and streamline the process for obtaining guidance and feedback from the eCQI community.

Join us for a live demo to see the features available from the first phase launch. Register now for the demo, scheduled for February 6, 2015 at 11am.

eCQM Testing Tool Cypress Latest Release

Cypress version 2.6, a testing and certification tool for electronic clinical quality measures, was released yesterday, January 22. The latest version can be downloaded fromhttp://projectcypress.org/.

Cypress v2.6 requires a fresh install of Cypress because of breaking changes in the QRDA Errata release. The upgrade to Health Level 7 (HL7) 2014 QRDA Errata release is needed to align with CMS submission systems for 2015 that also comply with the new errata release.

What’s New in the Cypress v2.6 Release*:

HL7 QRDA Errata IG for 2014

Support for the 2014 Errata Update to the HL7 Implementation Guide for CDA® Release2: Quality Reporting Document Architecture — Category I and Category III.

Cypress V2.6 Measure Bundle

Measure Bundle v2.6 includes updated patients. Measure Bundle v2.6 will be the only option available to the Cypress user for testing.

*Allows for a 90 day window for vendors to upgrade to Cypress v2.6. Cypress v2.5.1 and Cypress v2.4.1 will continue to be available for vendors to complete their existing test cycles before needing to upgrade.

Detailed release notes can be found online. Please send feedback about the Cypress eCQM certification releases and future enhancements to talk@projectcypress.org.