And now the synthesis begins

Mary Stevens, Editor

The deadline for comments is past now, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has input from thousands of sources to synthesize  before finalizing the proposed guidelines on meaningful use of certified EHR technology. Can they get it done during the spring and complete the rules before the spring ends with the summer solstice? Groups representing physician health IT managers, radiologists and even Congress members offered comments as the deadline loomed.

The American College of Radiology, American Board of Radiology, Radiological Society of North America and the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine jointly submitted their comments, emphasizing the importance of including diagnostic images in the meaningful use matrix. 

“The needs of radiology must be addressed in any national infrastructure in order to accomplish the broader goal of providing the best patient care possible,” said Keith Dreyer, DO, PhD, vice chairman of ACR's IT and Informatics Committee.

In addition, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives warned against too many requirements on data transmission within an organization in its comments to the ONC regarding the initial set of standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for EHR technology. CHIME commented on privacy and security standards included in the interim rule, particularly in areas of encryption and decryption of data, as well as verification of data to ensure it hasn’t been altered in transit and cross-enterprise authentication.

And the ARRA grant distributions continue. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced that an additional $162 million funded under the act will be awarded to 16 states and qualified state-designated entities to help them develop the policies and framework that allow health information to be securely exchanged across providers and hospitals.

Elsewhere on the care improvement spectrum, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices has released its Guidelines for Standard Order Sets to help organizations ensure that safe order communication has been followed when designing paper-based or electronic order sets. The guidelines focus primarily on medication orders, and also cover design, approval and maintenance aspects of standard order sets.

Whether paper or electronic, order sets should provide prompts in a designated standard location to gather and document patient information including prompts for patient allergies, metric measurements of patient height and weight and patient demographic information. Medication orders should include drug name, metric dose/strength, frequency, route of administration, indication, drug administration precautions, specific drugs to discontinue during therapy and instructions to address known potential emergencies, according to the organization’s checklist.

As we head into spring, more of the federal health IT picture will come to light, as will the ramifications for providers. Stay tuned ...  

Mary Stevens, editor
mstevens@trimedmedia.com