What's Happening in Health IT

In This Issue

Spring has sprung and the ONC staff is springing into action! We have a number of new blog posts we published on the Buzz blog this week about patient safety, an introduction by our new chief medical information officer and how health IT data can help doctors help control high blood pressure as part of the Million Hearts® Initiative. And before comments are due on the proposed 2015 Edition, you may want to check out a new webinar we've scheduled for next week. Read on, there’s much more going on!

Standards Advisory Comment Deadline is Today – More Deadlines are Coming

The deadline to submit your comments on the Interoperability Standards Advisory we issued with the draft Interoperability Roadmap is close of business today (5:00 p.m. EDT). And you have until the end of the month to comment on the 2015 Certification Criteria proposed rule and the proposed Meaningful Use rules issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (@CMSgov) (both are open until May 29).

The deadline for comments on the criterion for electronic clinical quality measure (CQM) reporting in the CMS 2016 Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems proposed rule isJune 29. The proposed criterion would require a certified Health IT Module to enable a user to electronically create a data file for transmission of CQM data, and would apply to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals.

You also have until June 30 to comment on the 2015 Edition Draft Test Procedures.

HIE Grant Opportunity Webinar

Don't forget that at 3:00 p.m. EDT Wednesday, May 6, we will be hosting an informational webinar that digs deeper into the Community Interoperability and HIE grant we recently issued. This grant makes available a total of $1 million for up to 10 awardees to expand resources for doctors, patients and communities to work together to unlock health information data and make it available when and where it matters most to advance individual, community and population health. The new funding opportunity application deadline is June 15, 2015 and organizations are being asked to help communities create opportunities for post-acute care and behavioral health providers who may not be connected.

ONC 2015 Edition Webinar

Hear from the experts about the proposed 2015 Edition Health IT Certification Criteria rule (#2015EditionCert) at 2:00 p.m. EDT Thursday, May 7. The webinar will offer an overview of the 2015 Edition proposed rule; a summary of the differences between previous editions of certification criteria and certification policies and the 2015 Edition proposed rule; and important milestones and timelines related to the proposed rule. Presenters are ONC’s ownElise Sweeney Anthony, Esq., deputy director, Office of Policy and Michael L. Lipinski, Esq., division director, Federal Policy and Regulatory Affairs. So sign up for the free webinar NOW!

AHRQ Webinar on Assessing Patient Health Information Needs

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is hosting a webinar onThursday, May 7 from 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. EDT to discuss projects that studied the identification of consumers' personal health information management practices and the context in which these practices occur to inform the development of consumer health information technology tools. Personal health information management practices describe how consumers access, organize and use their health information. The projects described in this webinar highlight tools to communicate safety concerns among hospitalized patients, tools to assist patients with diabetes and asthma management, and physical features of patients' homes that have an impact on personal health information management.Registration is now open.

Health IT Safety Webinar Series

Join us on Friday, May 8 from 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. EDT for the sixth webinar of a 10-part series on health IT and patient safety, " How can we Improve Diagnosis and Safety Using Health IT?" This free webinar presents perspectives on using health IT to reduce errors and harms associated with diagnostic errors, including how health IT can be leveraged to support diagnostic decision-making and follow-up of diagnostic information such as abnormal test results. Presenters are Jason Maude, founder and CEO, Isabel Healthcare; Hardeep Singh, M.D., M.P.H., chief, health policy, quality & informatics, Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston TX; Michael Kanter, M.D., regional medical director of quality and clinical analysis at Southern California Permanente Medical Group; and Mark Graber, M.D., RTI International. For additional information and to register, please visit: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6057274794614815490.

Slides and audio of previous webinars in this series are available at www.healthitsafety.org/education.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of May 4 (all times EDT)

The FACA schedule for the upcoming week is here:
Monday 11:30 a.m.: #HITSC Semantics Standards Workgroup meets

1:00 p.m.: #HITSC Content Standards Workgoup convenes
Tuesday 2:00 p.m.: #HITPC HIT Strategy & Innovation Workgroup meeting
Wednesday 12:00 noon: #HITPC Consumer Workgroup meeting

3:00 p.m.: #HITSC Transport & Security Standards Workgroup meeting
Thursday 10:30 a.m.: #HITPC Advanced Health Models & Meaningful Use Workgroup meets

2:00 p.m.: #HITSC Architecture, Services & API Workgroup convenes
Friday 12:00 noon: #HITSC Implementation, Certification & Testing Workgroup meeting

Note: The agenda and other materials will be available on HealthIT.gov before the meeting.

Health IT and the Million Hearts® Initiative

Read about how data used in the Million Hearts® program, designed to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2017, and reported through the meaningful use program 'could improve the timeliness and possibly completeness of data used to track issues of public health concern.' Our new Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Thomas Mason and Dr. Janet Wright, director of Million Hearts®, authored the blog post about the new ONC research, which was published Thursday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Read on to learn how "#HealthIT Holds the Promise to Help Improve Health."

Meet ONC’s Chief Medical Information Officer

Meet Dr. Andrew Gettinger, ONC's Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO)! Dr. Gettinger has more than 30 years' experience in medicine. He also led the multidisciplinary intensive care unit at Dartmouth before coming to ONC last year. In addition to being our CMIO, he is leading ONC’s Office of Clinical Quality and Safety where he is working towards 'a health IT-enabled learning health system.' Read more about Dr. Gettinger's background and vision!

Health IT and Patient Safety ... IOM was Right

Along with our own Kathy Kenyon, Dr. Gettinger also blogs about patient safety writing in a post published earlier this week that the Institute of Medicine (@TheIOM) was right about #HealthIT and patient safety. "Health IT should raise the floor on patient safety, and the evidence shows that it has," Dr. Gettinger writes. Read more about how Health IT is keeping patients safer!

New EHR Vendor Data

We have updated the meaningful use EHR vendor dataset for the month of March 2015. Please take a moment to review the data, which lists the health care providers who have attested to meaningful use under the CMS Medicare EHR Incentive Program. The data indicate the EHR product and vendor that they reported when attesting.