What's Happening in Health IT

In This Issue

Are you eligible for the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) Mobility Program? If so, ONC might have an opportunity for you. We are looking for a variety of scientific and technical staff to join the ONC team through the IPA program.
If you think you qualify, submit a current resume, a brief description on the type of position in which you are interested and your supervisory approval to ONC.HC@hhs.gov. We also need an administrative point of contact at your home office. The deadline is next Thursday, July 30, 2015.
ONC is still accepting applications for a Privacy and Security Research Scientist IPA. Interested candidates should submit resume or CV to privacyandsecurity@hhs.gov.

Meaningful Use Attestations

The latest Meaningful Use Attestation by EHR Vendor dataset is now available at HealthIT.gov. Check it out!

FCC to Hold Broadband Health Events in Florida

The Federal Communications Commission’s Connect2Health Task Force will travel to Miami and Jacksonville, Florida, on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, to highlight how broadband-enabled health technologies can transform health and care for seniors and people with disabilities. As our population ages and more Americans assume caregiving tasks for family members, broadband health technologies hold great promise to help address access to care issues, facilitate the next generation of caregiving and provide new self-management tools. The FCC will partner with the Mayo Clinic and AARP for these events. Visit fcc.gov/health for more information and to register.

ONC Consumer Summit

Save the date! The 5th Annual Consumer Health IT Summit will be held Thursday, October 1, 2015, in Washington, DC. Mark your calendars and stay tuned, more details to come.

Health IT Safety Webinar Series

Join us on July 30, 2015 from 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. (EDT) for the eighth webinar of a 10-part series on health IT and patient safety, “EHR Documentation and Health IT Safety.” This free webinar presents perspectives on electronic health record (EHR) documentation and its impact on health IT safety. Presenters are:

Gordon D. Schiff, M.D., associate director, Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Schiff will talk about clinical documentation and Patient Safety - The next frontier for better diagnosis and treatment.
Adam Wright, Ph.D., senior scientist in the Division of General Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who will talk about making more accurate problem lists—challenges and recommendations and,
Anna Orlova, Ph.D., senior director for Standards at the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). Dr. Orlova will discuss putting standards to work and improving clinical Documentation.
The moderator for the webinar will be Mark Graber, M.D., a Senior Fellow at RTI International and an internationally recognized authority on diagnostic errors in medicine.

Slides and audio of previous webinars in this series are also now available.

Webinar: Use Health IT to Improve Clinical Workflow

AHRQ is hosting a webinar Wednesday, July 29 from 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. ET on how health IT can be used to support improvements in clinical workflow. Research suggests that health IT can assist in providers’ information processing, health care decision making, and ultimately, the delivery of high quality of care. However, health IT applications can limit rather than support a provider’s ability to provide care unless appropriately designed to take into account their information needs and workflow processes. Researchers on this Web conference will discuss how health IT used in diverse settings including primary care offices and emergency departments can be better designed to support clinical workflow and improve patient care. Registration is open.

Cypress eCQM Testing Tool New Features

The newest update to the Cypress eCQM testing tool went live Thursday, July 23 and included three updates:

Cypress v2.7.0, which supports 2015 eCQM Annual Update, aligns with the May 2015 release and the June corrections of Eligible Hospital (EH) and Eligible Professional (EP) eCQM specifications published by CMS as well as with HL7 QRDA Category I Release 3 specification. The tool is not initially available for certification because the 2014 Certification Edition only applies to the current QRDA specification. This version is a tool for testing the 2015 measure specifications and the new QRDA R3 requirements for CMS submissions.

Cypress Validation Utility - Separate and optional utility for testing QRDA conformance against the CMS QRDA Combined Implementation Guides (IGs) and it also supports recently published 2016 CMS QRDA Combined IG. The tool also checks additional QRDA constraints required for CMS submission that are not tested with Cypress Certification which tests compliance to the base QRDA IG.

Cypress v2.6.1 Patch Release - Supports improvements in QRDA validation testing and is available for use in certification after Cypress v2.7.0 is released. You can use Cypress v2.6.1 to pretest and certify 2014 EH and EP eCQM packages. Finally, it will evaluate QRDA compliance against the HL7 QRDA Errata IG published in 2014 and uses Measure Bundle v2.6.0 that was issued with this release. For more information, please see the detailed release notes. We welcome your questions and feedback about Cypress ontalk@projectcypress.org.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of July 27 (all times EDT)

Monday

2:00 p.m.: The Health IT Policy Committee’s (#HITPC) Privacy & Security Workgroup meets. The agenda and meeting materials will be available on our website: http://bit.ly/1Snfoip

Wednesday

11:00 a.m.: The Clinical, Technical, Organizational and Financial Barriers to Interoperability Task Force meets. Find the agenda here: http://bit.ly/1HMYeER

Thursday

12:00 p.m.: The Health IT Standards Committee’s Interoperability Standards Advisory Task Force meets. The agenda will be posted prior to the meeting here: http://bit.ly/1SnfTZD

2:00 p.m.: The #HITPC Quality Measurement Task Force meets. Follow along here:http://bit.ly/1HuQev9