Healthcare IT News - January 2008 - (Page 5) www.HealthcareITNews.com industry news January 2008 ■ Healthcare IT News It alliance presses for patient identifiers By rICHarD PIzzI, Associate Editor – The National Alliance for Health Information Technology is pushing for a voluntary, patient-controlled system of unique identifiers, calling it the “only way to ensure safety and accuracy when exchanging medical information” through an electronic national network. “One of the biggest obstacles to progress in developing an interoperable national health information network remains CHICaGo reaching agreement on how to correctly match medical information to patients while guarding their privacy,” said Scott Wallace, the alliance’s president and CEO. “It is time to come to consensus on this issue so we can move forward on a system that will help transform healthcare in America.” Founded in 2002, the alliance is a partnership of senior executives from all ty, quality of care and operating performance. T h e a l l i a n c e’s Te c h n o l o g y Leadership and Policy committees have concluded that the current statistical process for matching patients to their records based on Scott Wallace such attributes as name, address healthcare sectors working to advance the and birth date is too unreliable. Alliance representatives say the adoption of clinical IT systems to achieve measurable improvements in patient safeIDeNTIfIer see page 7 “it is time to come to consensus on this issue so we can move forward on a system that will transforM healthcare in america.” Groups team up with hL7 to develop PhR standards By rICHarD PIzzI, Associate Editor aNN aRBoR, mI - Health Level Seven, Inc., America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association last month signed a memorandum of understanding to create a collaborative process for the maintenance of portability standards for personal health records. The MOU expands the number of stakeholders involved in the standards development process to help facilitate data portability between health insurance plans to give plan members the ability to move their personal health data when their health coverage changes. “We applaud AHIP and BCBSA for investing in the early development efforts of the PHR data portability standards and for entrusting HL7 to maintain the standards,” said Charles Jaffe, MD, CEO of HL7. “PHRs will give consumers the power to integrate and manage their personal healthcare information and it provides a framework for standards-based interoperability between the consumer and the provider.” ■ GETAWAYGiveaway at VACATION at the HIMSS08 Annual Conference & Exhibition In Orlando Join Healthcare IT News at HIMSS08 in Orlando where you’ll have the opportunity to win a luxury vacation!* IT’S EASY: Stop by Booth #1727 or look inside the February issue of Healthcare IT News to obtain your Playing Card. Visit ten (10) booths total, including our must-stop sponsors. Drop off your completed Playing Card at the Healthcare IT News Booth #1727. Stop by the Healthcare IT News Booth #1727 on Wednesday, February 27 at 5:30pm to see if you’ve won! More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: pHr 0108 ● aHIMa For complete contest details, visit www.healthcareitnews.com/vacationgetaway Continued from page 4 summary information for use in transfer of care between acute and long-term care facilities. ■ Apply logical observation identifiers, names and codes representations and semantic matching codes (including the use of SNOMED-CT) to MDS and OASIS, and validate the accuracy of the encoding. ■ Investigate the intellectual property implications for disseminating standardized MDS, OASIS and IRF-PAI assessments, and develop recommendations for disseminating the healthcare IT encoded instruments. ■ Validate the accuracy of the healthcare IT standards applied to the nursing facility assessment instrument through the use of hypothetical MDS data and analyze the payment impact. Kloss said the project would create a repeatable framework for making future assessment requirements interoperable. The implementation guidance developed for the exchange of standardized assessments and patient summaries will guide vendors, providers and policymakers on how to apply standards to assessments and patient summary information and use standards to support the exchange of the information, she said. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: aHIMa 0108 Sponsored by: For information on including your booth in the Vacation Getaway Giveaway, please contact: VP, SALES John D. 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