What's Happening in Health IT

In This Issue

This week, in honor of National Rural Health Day, we want to shout out to all the rural providers and consumers who are using health IT to exchange health data over those long distances and help improve the health and health care of every American, wherever they live. Just a reminder, we will be taking a breather next week, but will be back on December 4. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Celebrating National Rural Health Day

From the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee to the remote woodlands of Kalispell, Montana, ONC is working to help doctors and patients get connected so health information is available when and where it’s needed. Read more about our efforts to connect providers with grants and loans to obtain broadband access and the ongoing efforts to coordinate care for Veterans who see both Veterans Affairs and community providers in our latest blog post.

View the Latest Data on Meaningful Use Measures of Exchange

Electronic health information exchange is essential to ensure patients have access to their health information when and where they need it. The newly released ONC Quick Stat, Electronic Health Information Exchange Performance reported to the Medicare EHR Incentive Program, 2014, visualizes provider performance on 2014 meaningful use measures of exchange: (1) view, download, or transmit (VDT) electronic health information and (2) electronic transmission of summaries of care. Check out this and other analyses of health IT and ONC program data at the Health IT Dashboard.

New Report on Health Information Exchanges use of PHRs

Check out the recently released Key Considerations for HIE-based Personal Health Records. This document was developed in collaboration with HIEs implementing PHRs to provide lessons learned to other HIEs thinking about adopting PHRs. It includes information about the value proposition for HIE-based PHRs, issues and barriers to adoption, strategy for designing and implementing an HIE-sponsored PHR and case studies.

#2015EdCert Draft Test Procedures Posted for Final Public Comment

A gentle reminder that the 2015 Edition draft test procedures are out for a final public comment period through November 30, 2015. Additionally, ONC recently published a new resource: “Certification Companion Guides” (CCGs). The CCGs are designed to help health IT developers more quickly understand and interpret regulatory requirements so that they can focus on product development. A CCG has been developed for each certification criterion and will serve as the single, consolidated information source for any clarifications related to a certification criterion. To learn more about these materials, check out the full blog post by Steve Posnack.

Bonnie (eCQM testing tool) User Forum

ONC and CMS invite you to join the new online Bonnie User Forum. Bonnie is a tool for testing electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs). The purpose of this user forum is to create a community of Bonnie users that can benefit from one another’s experience and questions, and to allow the Bonnie development team to easily reach out to the community regarding new releases, proposed features, and focus group opportunities. To join: Navigate to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/bonnie. Then sign into a google account, or create one. (You can create a google account tied to an existing email address: under “Choose your username” click “I prefer to use my current email address).” Then click “Join group” and adjust your preferred settings in the pop-up dialog to indicate how you wish to receive group messages. Finally, click “Join the group.” Contactbonnie-feedback-list@lists.mitre.org with any questions.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of November 23

Happy Thanksgiving! During Thanksgiving week we want to thank all of the hard-working volunteers from our Federal Advisory Committees. There are no meetings scheduled for next week. Enjoy the respite - we have much more work to do!