Healthcare IT News - September 2007 - (Page 6)

Healthcare IT News ■ September 2007 industry news www.HealthcareITNews.com cchIt calls for comments on 2008 EhR certification By DIaNa MaNos, Senior Editor CHICaGo – The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology begins a 30-day public survey Sept. 13 on its plans for next year’s certification criteria. During the survey, or “environmental scan,” as CCHIT calls it, the commission’s workgroup members will gather standards, use cases and other emerging requirements for healthcare IT, said Mark Leavitt, MD, chairman of the Commission. The survey will also assess how ready the marketplace is for the new certifications CCHIT has planned, Leavitt said. According to Leavitt, the survey will provide “the evidence base needed to make fair and balanced decisions on what criteria to require, and when to do so.” CCHIT will ask for comments in areas to include: ■ Ambulatory settings ■ Inpatient settings ■ Health information exchanges ■ Emergency departments the survey will provide “the evidence base needed to make fair and balanced decisions on what criteria to require, and when to do so.” – Mark Leavitt ■ ■ Interoperability Security and privacy ■ Compliance After CCHIT processes results from the survey, it will issue a first draft of the 2008 criteria for public comment in late November, a statement from CCHIT said. The comission has also scheduled a number of town calls on Sept. 19 to discuss the surveys. ■ ■ ■ Cardiovascular medicine Child health More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: CCHIt 0907 ● MaNos Continued from page 5 Healthcare IT Solutions at Lockheed Martin, said private sector governance bodies “have uniformly been ineffective at driving convergence.” He recommends that AHIC continue as a government function with authority and control over federal healthcare IT initiatives. Raymond Peter Zambuto from Technology in Medicine, Inc., says abandoning AHIC to a marketplace with conflicting incentives is a bad idea. “The Fed is the largest stakeholder in terms of patient populations,” he said. It’s as if all this talk has sparked a greater awareness of the process, and voices are now being heard that are neither federal nor private. On Aug. 21, a healthcare consortium, the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance, Inc., called for more nurse involvement in healthcare IT standards harmonization. Nurses, as frontline caregivers, have a lot to offer on how the technology should be advanced to improve patient care, the consortium said. In an Aug. 15 meeting of the State Alliance for e-Health, a gathering of state-level stakeholders, Rhonda Medows, MD, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health and co-chairman of the Alliance’s Health Information Communication and Data Exchange Taskforce, said states should come to agreement with the federal government on national standards. One thing is clear from all of this: More people than ever are ready to roll up their sleeves to help advance healthcare IT. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: MaNoS 0907 ● sTaTes Continued from page 5 healthcare IT laws. Rhonda Medows, MD, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health and co-chair of the Alliance’s Health Information Communication and Data Exchange Taskforce, said states should come to agreement on national standards with the federal government. The key to exchanging information on the state level, and between states, will be uniform interoperability standards. She also emphasized that consumers must also be part of the process. “At the end of the day, the person at the center of the exchange is the consumer,” Medows said. Sallie Hunt, co-chair of the Alliance’s Health Information Protection Taskforce and chief privacy officer of the West Virginia Health Care Authority, said varying state consent laws prohibit an easy exchange of information. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: StateS 0907 Offer subject to CDW’s standard terms and conditions of sale, available at CDW.com. ©2007 CDW Corporation ● 4046_cdw_HITN_sel_sp_9-1.indd 1 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7662 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7658 http://CDW.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7660

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - September 2007

Contents Alaska Sweep SiCKO Debate Data Exchange Rx EDITH knows Hold That Script IT in the Sun Breathing Easy IT on the Menu Ambulatory EMRs Identity Crisis

Healthcare IT News - September 2007

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