In March 2019, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued a Proposed Rule, 21st Century Cures Act: Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT Certification Program and released a final Rule in March 2020, published in the Federal Register on May 1, 2020. Compliance for the Information Blocking provisions…
It’s time to get out the crystal ball and share some thoughts on what to expect for healthcare in 2021. In 2021, there will be a higher expectation for information sharing. The pandemic has shown that there is a willingness to share personal data when the benefits are clearly communicated. The growth in the amount…
Application programing interfaces (APIs) are a set of standards that govern how software applications interact with each other. APIs are essential in health care data exchange, whether for data analytics, research, or creating new ways to access electronic health records (EHR.) APIs are needed when two software components interact, whether in an operating system or…
“A master patient index (MPI) is an index of known patients within a single organization whose visits are linked together by a single identifier, typically the medical record number. MPI management activities typically pertain to a software application that identifies, coordinates, and lists database information. Enterprise MPI (EMPI) combines MPIs of two or more organizations.…
Healthcare data is collected to improve the cost and quality of healthcare. But this leads to the question of how to incorporate data of different quality and accessibility, as the data is usually sourced from a wide variety of systems used within administrative and clinical systems. Interoperability between administrative and clinical systems offers the opportunity…
Information blocking is “a practice by a health IT developer of certified health IT, health information network, health information exchange, or health care provider that, except as required by law or specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a reasonable and necessary activity, is likely to interfere with access, exchange, or…
On July 15, 2020, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield and United States Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Chief Information Officer Jose Arrieta provided an update for members of the media on HHS efforts to gather and disseminate real-time hospital data on COVID-19. In short, rather than requiring hospitals…
Website ADA compliance related lawsuits are on the rise. Federal lawsuits have jumped year after year as companies fail to meet website ADA compliance accessibility guidelines. In particular, persons with disabilities have sued businesses for not providing adequate access. The Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA aims to prohibit discrimination. It ensures equal opportunity and…
Among many other things, COVID-19 has shown us the importance of data for healthcare to predict, prepare, and respond in an effective and structured manner to a global health crisis. We need data to determine the current virus status, document the spread and calculate the curve. To mitigate the spread, real-time data collection, governance and…
What is health data integrity? Data integrity refers to “the process of maintaining the accuracy, reliability and consistency of data over its entire ‘life-cycle.’ Applied to healthcare, this can include (but is not limited to) maintaining the accuracy of patient’s personal details, health summary, clinical notes, test results and family information.” Data is needed to…