List of Healthcare IT Trade Associations

Posted on May 6, 2022 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

Advancing Medical Practice Success with Strategic Relationships

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To be efficient in healthcare delivery today, doctors must partner and understand the resources and affiliations that are available to them. Here is a brief list of several healthcare trade associations and leading industry vendors submitted for your review.

AHIMA
The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) is the premier association of health information management professionals. AHIMA’s 51,000 members are dedicated to the effective management of personal health information needed to deliver quality healthcare to the public. Founded in 1928 to improve the quality of medical records, AHIMA is committed to advancing the health information management profession in an increasingly electronic and global environment through leadership in advocacy, education, certification, and lifelong learning.

EHRA
HIMSS EHRA is a trade association of Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors that addresses national efforts to create interoperable EHRs in hospital and ambulatory care settings. HIMSS EHRA operates on the premise that the rapid, widespread adoption of EHRs will help improve the quality of patient care and the productivity of the healthcare system. The primary mission of the association is to provide a forum for the EHR vendor community relative to standards development, the EHR certification process, interoperability, performance and quality measures, and other EHR issues that may become the subject of increasing government, insurance and physician association initiatives and requests.

HIMSS
HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) is the healthcare industry’s membership organization exclusively focused on providing leadership for the optimal use of healthcare information technology and management systems for the betterment of human health. Founded in 1961 with offices in Chicago, Washington D.C., and other locations across the country, HIMSS represents approximately 17,000 individual members and some 275 member corporations that employ more than 1 million people. HIMSS frames and leads healthcare public policy and industry practices through its advocacy, educational and professional development initiatives designed to promote information and management systems’ contributions to ensuring quality patient care.

HITSP
The Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel serves as a cooperative partnership between the public and private sectors for achieving a widely accepted and useful set of standards specifically to enable and support widespread interoperability among healthcare software applications, as they will interact in a local, regional, and national health information network for the United States. Comprised of a wide range of stakeholders, the Panel will assist in the development of the U.S. Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) by addressing issues such as privacy and security within a shared healthcare information system. The Panel is sponsored by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in cooperation with strategic partners such as the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the Advanced Technology Institute (ATI), and Booz Allen Hamilton. Funding for the Panel is being provided via the ONCHIT contract award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

HL7
Health Level Seven is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited Standards Developing Organization (SDO) operating in the healthcare clinical and administrative data arena. It is a not-for-profit volunteer organization made up of providers, vendors, payers, consultants, government groups, and others who develop clinical and administrative data standards for healthcare. Health Level Seven develops specifications; the most widely used being a messaging standard that enables disparate healthcare applications to exchange keys sets of clinical and administrative data.

MSHUG
Microsoft Healthcare Users Group (MS-HUG) unified with the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) as part of the HIMSS Users Group Alliance Program in October 2003. The unification strengthens the commitment of HIMSS and MS-HUG to better serve their members and the industry through a shared strategic vision to provide leadership and healthcare information technology solutions that improve the delivery of patient care.

WEDI
The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange [WEDI’s] goal is to improve the quality of healthcare through effective and efficient information exchange and management. They aim to provide leadership and guidance to the healthcare industry on how to use and leverage the industry’s collective knowledge, expertise, and information resources to improve the quality, affordability, and availability of healthcare.

Assessment

As the health information technology industry evolves, we will continue to contribute our expertise to foster ideas that shape the future of healthcare by offering more examples similar to the above.

Conclusion

And so, your thoughts and comments on this Medical Executive-Post are appreciated. Who did we miss? Feel free to review our top-left column, and top-right sidebar materials, links, URLs and related websites, too. Then, be sure to subscribe

Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Medical Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com

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“Meaningful Use” for Ambulatory Care Medical Practices

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

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EHR Objectives and Measures

By Shahid N. Shah MS  

For ambulatory care practices and physicians there are about 25 objectives and measures that must be met to become a “meaningful user”. Keep in mind that meaningful use is not tied to a certified EHR alone; in fact, unless you use the EHR properly and in all the ways the government wants you to, you will not be a “meaningful user”.

Don’t be fooled by EHR vendors guaranteeing that they will make you a “meaningful user” – no vendor’s software, no matter how nice, can get your staff to use the software in the way the government wants. You, as the CIO of your practice, are the only one that can guarantee that. In fact, you don’t even need an EHR from a vendor to meet the requirements – you can even roll your own, use open source, or find any other means.

Fear and Promises

In general, as long as you can attest and send data to the government that they require you can do it in any way that you want. Be aware that some unscrupulous vendors are scaring practices and making promises that they cannot keep.

Final MU Rules

The final Meaningful Use (MU) Rule was published by HHS on July 13, 2010. It defines 24 objectives for and measures eligible hospitals that could be met to become a meaningful user and qualify for incentive funding. There is a “core set” that must be met by all institutions and a “menu set” of from which organizations must implement at least 5 objectives.

Core Set Objectives

These are the “core set” of 14 objectives that must be met by all institutions and a “menu set” of 10 from which organizations must implement at least 5 objectives (at least 1 public health objective must be chosen from that set).

  1. Use Computer Provider Order Entry (CPOE).
  2. Implement drug-drug, drug-allergy, and drug-formulary checks.
  3. Record demographics.
  4. Implement one clinical decision support rule.
  5. Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses based on ICD-9-CM or SNOMED CT.
  6. Maintain active medication list.
  7. Maintain active medication allergy list.
  8. Record and chart changes in vital signs.
  9. Record smoking status for patients 13 years or older.
  10. Report hospital clinical quality measures to CMS or States.
  11. Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information, upon request.
  12. Provide patients with an electronic copy of their discharge instructions at time of discharge, upon request.
  13. Capability to exchange key clinical information among providers of care and patient-authorized entities electronically.
  14. Protect electronic health information.

Menu Set Objectives

These are the “menu set” of 10 objectives from which organizations must implement at least 5. At least one public health objective must be chosen from this set as well (numbers 8 or 9). Drug-formulary checks.

  1. Record advanced directives for patients 65 years or older.
  2. Incorporate clinical lab test results as structured data.
  3. Generate lists of patients by specific conditions.
  4. Use certified EHR technology to identify patient-specific education resources and provide to patient, if appropriate.
  5. Medication reconciliation.
  6. Summary of care record for each transition of care/referrals.
  7. Capability to submit electronic data to immunization registries/systems.
  8. Capability to provide electronic submission of reportable lab results to public health agencies.
  9. Capability to provide electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies.

Government Agencies and Participants Involved in MU

As you can see in the Figure, the Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare IT (ONCHIT) is a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ONCHIT, usually abbreviated just ONC, is the principal policy group of the Federal Government that defines and manages NHIN.

Figure Link: Figure 

* ONC is responsible for coordinating with the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on the specifications for the NHIN standards.

* The HIT Policy and HIT Standards Committees are the working groups that advise ONC on what to put in the standards.

* NIST is responsible for coming up with the test materials (assertions, procedures, methods, tools, data, and so on) that will be used to certify working systems 

Conclusion

Your thoughts and comments on this ME-P are appreciated. Feel free to review our top-left column, and top-right sidebar materials, links, URLs and related websites, too. Then, subscribe to the ME-P. It is fast, free and secure.

Link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HealthcareFinancialsthePostForcxos

Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Medical Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com

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More on the Meaningful Use of eMRs

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

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Final Meaningful Use Rules Released by HHS on July 13, 2010.

[By Shahid N. Shah MS]

Link: http://shahid.shah.org

For ambulatory care practices and physicians there are about 25 objectives and measures that must be met to become a “meaningful user”. Keep in mind that meaningful use is not tied to a certified EHR alone; in fact, unless you use the EHR properly and in all the ways the government wants you to, you will not be a “meaningful user”. Don’t be fooled by EHR vendors guaranteeing that they will make you a “meaningful user” – no vendor’s software, no matter how nice, can get your staff to use the software in the way the government wants. You, as the CIO of your practice, are the only one that can guarantee that. In fact, you don’t even need an EHR from a vendor to meet the requirements – you can even roll your own, use open source, or find any other means. But, in general, as long as you can attest and send data to the government that they require you can do it in any way that you want. Be aware that some unscrupulous vendors are scaring practices and making promises that they cannot keep.

Final MU Rules

The final Meaningful Use (MU) Rule was published by HHS on July 13, 2010. It defines 24 objectives for and measures eligible hospitals that could be met to become a meaningful user and qualify for incentive funding. There is a “core set” that must be met by all institutions and a “menu set” of from which organizations must implement at least 5 objectives.

Core Set Objectives

These are the “core set” of 14 objectives that must be met by all institutions and a “menu set” of 10 from which organizations must implement at least 5 objectives (at least 1 public health objective must be chosen from that set).

  1. Use Computer Provider Order Entry (CPOE).
  2. Implement drug-drug, drug-allergy, and drug-formulary checks.
  3. Record demographics.
  4. Implement one clinical decision support rule.
  5. Maintain a problem list of current and active Dxs based on ICD-9-CM or SNOMED CT.
  6. Maintain active medication list.
  7. Maintain active medication allergy list.
  8. Record and chart changes in vital signs.
  9. Record smoking status for patients 13 years or older.
  10. Report hospital clinical quality measures to CMS or States.
  11. Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information, upon request.
  12. Provide patients an e-copy of discharge instructions at time of discharge, upon request.
  13. Exchange key clinical e-information among providers and patient-authorized entities.
  14. Protect electronic health information.

Menu Set Objectives

These are the “menu set” of 10 objectives from which organizations must implement at least 5. At least one public health objective must be chosen from this set as well (numbers 8, 9, or 10).

  1. Drug-formulary checks.
  2. Record advanced directives for patients 65 years or older.
  3. Incorporate clinical lab test results as structured data.
  4. Generate lists of patients by specific conditions.
  5. Use certified eHR technology to identify patient-specific education resources and provide to patient, if appropriate.
  6. Medication reconciliation.
  7. Summary of care record for each transition of care/referrals.
  8. Capability to submit electronic data to immunization registries/systems.
  9. Capability to provide electronic submission of reportable lab results to public health agencies.
  10. Capability to provide electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies.

Assessment

As can be seen in the link below, the Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare IT (ONCHIT) is a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ONCHIT, usually abbreviated just ONC, is the principal policy group of the Federal Government that defines and manages NHIN.

  • ONC is responsible for coordinating with the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on the specifications for the NHIN standards.
  • The HIT Policy and HIT Standards Committees are the working groups that advise ONC on what to put in the standards.
  • NIST is responsible for coming up with the test materials (assertions, procedures, methods, tools, data, and so on) that will be used to certify working systems.

Conclusion

Your thoughts and comments on this ME-P are appreciated. Feel free to review our top-left column, and top-right sidebar materials, links, URLs and related websites, too. Then, subscribe to the ME-P. It is fast, free and secure.

Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Medical Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com

OUR OTHER PRINT BOOKS AND RELATED INFORMATION SOURCES:

Product Details 

Filed under: Book Reviews, Information Technology, Practice Management | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »