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HITSP

Comments to ONC: PCAST HIT Report Becomes a Political Piñata

The PCAST Report on Health IT has become a political piñata. 

Early Feedback on PCAST 

Like many of my colleagues, I was taken aback by the release of the Report in early December 2010 — I didn’t know quite what to make of it. Response in the first week of release was: 

Limited. The first commentaries were primarily by technical and/or clinical bloggers. The mainstream HIT world had remarkably little initial reaction to the Report. 
Respectful of the imprimatur of “The President’s” Report and noting some of the big names associated with the […]

Is HITECH Working? #3: ONC got it right on the 3 major policy interpretations: Meaningful Use, Certification, Standards

We concluded our last post in this series with a blunt prediction that “key physicians will sit on the sidelines” and that clinician non-adoption of EHR technology is a potential “deal-breaker for the success of HITECH”.

While this might sound like a criticism of the way HITECH has been implemented, it’s not intended that way — it’s a commentary on 1) the complexity and scope of change that will be required to make HITECH successful, and 2) the level of protective entrenchment existing American […]

John Halamka’s Stunning 180: “Dogs and Cats Should Live in Harmony”

The King of the Cats has just acknowledged that indeed cats and dogs should co-exist peacefully.

Dr. John Halamka — Vice Chair of the HIT Standards Committee of the ONC and one of the most vocal and influential figures in health IT — writes a blog post this morning entitled “The Genius of AND”. Halamka reasonably summarizes the essence of the debate about standards and interoperability as being between “the healthcare informatics crowd” (cats) and the “Internet crowd” (dogs):

He notes that the debate […]

Feline Foot-Dragging: Three Non-Innovative Aspects of HITECH

What do cats (incumbent EHR vendors and their supporters) have to smile about over HITECH?

A lot.

…and it’s not very complicated.  HITECH directs $17 B to the cat community, and leaves scraps for the dogs.

(As a refresher, the cat POV is that HITECH stimulus funds should simply pay directly for electronic health record (EHR) technology — that providers will figure out how to use the technology to improve quality and outcomes; the dog POV is that HITECH should pay for improved […]

CCHIT Should Support BOTH the HL7 CCD and the ASTM CCR for PHRs.

The federal government sponsored Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT ) is undertaking a certification process for personal health records (PHRs) . The CCHIT PHR Work Group has invited public comment on the First Draft of the PHR Certification Criteria .

The current draft of the PHR Certification Criteria specifies use of the HL7 Continuity of Care Document (CCD) as the only endorsed standard for interoperable exchange of information to and from PHRs.  This is extremely short-sighted.

I wrote a comment to […]

Untangling the Electronic Health Data Exchange

by David C. Kibbe MD, MBA

The purpose of this post is to help a non-technical audience untangle some of the confusion regarding health data exchange standards, and particularly come to a better understanding of the similarities and  differences between the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) standard and the CDA Continuity of Care Document (CCD). But what I’m most interested in is getting beyond the technical, political, or economic positions and interests of the proponents of any particular standard to arrive […]

Connecting the Dots…Google Health Promises to Create AND Dominate Next Generation PHRs

Google Health (GH) could be the event of the decade in advancing health care reform — not just healthcare information technology (HIT) reform, but health care system reform. GH promises simultaneously to create AND dominate the market for next generation personal health records (PHRs). There is nothing else in our solar system or in the entire universe like it.

While Google has not “officially” announced the details of GH, they’ve left a lot of clues. In this essay I’m going to […]