What's Happening in Health IT

In This Issue

Just a reminder … you have until the end of the month to comment on our 2015 Certification Criteria proposed rule and the proposed Meaningful Use rule issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (@CMSgov) (both are open for comment untilMay 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.

$1 Billion Invested in Rural Health Care

Working with our federal partners at the U.S. Department of Agriculture we have helped invest $1 billion to help rural providers in 13 states get wired. This program, launched by the White House Rural Council Initiative in 2011, was a broad effort to help "rural small businesses access capital, expand rural jobs and training services, and increase rural access to health care workers and technology." Read our latest blog post for all the details!

Market R&D Challenge Winners Named

If you are a fan of National Small Business Week, we've got some news for you! ONC recently announced the six winners of the Market R&D Pilot Challenge. The challenge is designed so app developers partner with health care organizations to live test new health information technology applications. One of the goals is to try and encourage participants to help break down the barriers between themselves and create an environment where the apps can be tested with the most important stakeholders – the patients. Read more about the six winning partners.

HIE Grant Opportunity

Submissions are being accepted until June 15, 2015 for 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. Organizations are being asked to help communities create opportunities for post-acute care and behavioral health providers who may not be connected.

Cypress QRDA Validation Utility Available

The Cypress Validation Utility with support for the 2015 CMS QRDA Combined Implementation Guide is now available. This new utility is a development tool for health IT vendors and others who are testing synthetic QRDA Category I and Category III documents for conformance to CMS submission requirements for the 2015 reporting period. While it is not required for certification and does not constitute a certification test, it is designed to help vendors reduce file submission errors when they submit reports to CMS. Files submitted for validation testing must not contain Protected Health Information (PHI) or Personally Identifiable Information (PII). You can access the Cypress QRDA utility from HealthIT.gov's Standards Implementation and Testing Environment. You can also find QRDA Validators in the QRDA Sandbox. Please send any questions or feedback about the validation utility to talk@projectcypress.org.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of May 11 (all times EDT)

The FACA schedule for the upcoming week is here:Monday 9:30 a.m.: The Health IT Policy (#HITPC) Consumer Workgroup meets.

11:30 a.m.: The #HITPC Implementation, Usability & Safety Workgroup convenes.Tuesday 9:30 a.m.: The full #HITPC meets for an all-day meeting.Wednesday 12:00 noon: The Health IT Standards (#HITSC) Architecture, Services and APIs Workgroup holds a web conference.Thursday 2:00 p.m.: The #HITSC Implementation, Certification and Testing Workgroup holds a web conference.

3:30 p.m.: The #HITPC Interoperability & HIE Workgroup convenes a web conference.Friday 10:00 a.m.: The #HITSC Semantic Standards Workgroup holds a web conference.

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