What's Happening in Health IT

In This Issue

The Summer Solstice – otherwise known as the longest day of the year and the official kick off to summer – is right around the corner (June 21). But if you are not packing up the station wagon and heading to the beach anytime soon, check out the latest health IT news!

The deadline for submissions for the Community Interoperability and Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program is fast approaching … in fact it’s comingMonday, June 15. The funding opportunity is designed to help increase the number of community efforts to make sure health information is appropriately accessed and used to help people improve their health. We are also looking for Objective Reviewers to select awardees, which will take place in mid-July. Submit your resume/CV, including a working e-mail address and phone number to ONC_ObjectiveReview@hhs.gov by June 30, 2015.

Also coming up is 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 which is June 16. You also have until June 30 to comment on the 2015 Edition Draft Test Procedures.

On June 9^th we published a notice in the Federal Register that restated our continued investment in working with the health IT industry towards a more streamlined health IT testing and certification system. This notice addressed a flexibility included in the ONC Health IT Certification Program - specifically the National Coordinator’s ability to approve test procedures, test tools, and test data developed by non-governmental entities. Please take part in this open opportunity!

New EHR Vendor Data

We have updated the meaningful use EHR vendor dataset for the month of April 2015 (The datasets can be found along the right side of the page under ‘EHR Products Used for Meaningful Use Attestation.’ And, FYI, this is a large file, so it may take a few minutes to download). 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. This dataset, and all future publications of the dataset, now include national provider identifiers (NPI), which allow users more flexibility in linking the data with other CMS datasets. You can also access this dataset and several supporting data visualizations through the ONC Health IT Dashboard. Check out the /data page for this and other open datasets, and the/quickstats and /dashboards pages for related EHR Vendor data visualizations.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Precision Medicine RFI

The NIH is trying to enlist 1 million or more Americans into a national research cohort to fulfill the goals of President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative. The focus of this Request for Information is to develop and implement “effective community engagement strategies for the cohort and to advance the cohort’s ability to conduct transformative research to address health disparities.” Cohort – Strategies to Address Community Engagement and Health Disparities, http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15-107.html

Health IT Safety Webinar Series

Join us on June 19 1:00-2:30 p.m. EDT for the seventh webinar of a 10-part series on IT and patient safety, "EHR Usability and Health IT Safety". This free webinar presents perspectives on EHR usability and its impact on health IT safety. Presenters are Raj Ratwani, Ph.D., scientific director, National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, Kris Engdahl, M.S., senior manager of User Research, athenahealth, Ross C. Teague, Ph.D., senior manager of User Experience at Allscripts, and Jonathan S. Wald, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.M.I., director, Patient-Centered Technologies, RTI International. Read more about the series and register now! Slides and audio of previous webinars in this series are also now available.

Long-Term & Post-Acute Care (LTPAC) Health IT Summit

Join the LTPAC Health IT Collaborative from June 21- 23rd for the LTPAC Health IT Summit in Baltimore, Maryland. Kelly Cronin, ONC's director of the Office of Care Transformation, will be highlighting efforts to advance the draft Interoperability Roadmap and discuss changes in payment reform and policy that are spurring innovation in health IT and long-term post-acute care.

June 25 CE/CME Webinar on the Impact of Health IT on Workflow

AHRQ is hosting a Webinar from 1:30 - 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 25, to discuss workflow impacts of health IT and practice redesign and present the results of two studies. The first study analyzed the causal relationship between health IT implementation and ambulatory care workflow redesign, social and technical factors, and the role these factors play in mitigating or increasing health ITs workflow impacts, as well as the workflow impacts of health IT-associated interruptions. The second study focused on the workflow impact of implementing health IT-enabled care coordination for patients with diabetes within six ambulatory primary care clinics. Registration is open.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of June 15 (all times EDT)

Monday
11:00 a.m.: The #HITPC Quality Measurement Task Force meets. More details are available here: http://bit.ly/1GwOCnp

Wednesday
12:00 p.m.: The Implementation, Certification and Testing Workgroup meets. Learn more: http://bit.ly/1KTbBqz