HLN Consulting, LLC – Innovators in Public Health Informatics

Preliminary Thoughts on CMS MIPS IP NPRM: A Public Health Perspective

by Noam Arzton July 17, 2018

Well, here we go again.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has now released a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), titled Medicare Program; Revisions to Payment Policies under the Physician Fee Schedule and Other Revisions to Part B for CY 2019; Medicare Shared Savings Program Requirements; Quality Payment Program; and Medicaid Promoting Interoperability Program. The purpose of this NPRM is to address proposed changes for Year 3 of MIPS, the provider (as opposed to hospital) side of the Quality Payment Program. The part that is most relevant to public health is the Medicaid Promoting Interoperability (IP) Program for Eligible Professionals (EP)” (the EHR Incentive Programs have been renamed). A major goal of this NPRM is to synchronize as much as possible the EP program with the hospital-based program that was addressed in a previous NPRM just a few months ago.

HLN Presenting at Upcoming Healthcare Meetings

by Noam Arzton July 16, 2018

Over the next several months HLN will be attending a number of important healthcare and public health meetings and events and presenting our work and perspectives. Events and presentations include:

2018 OSEHRA Open Source Summit (July 18-20): HLN will be joining colleagues on the Immunization Working Group for an update of the groups activities, including an update on HLN’s ICE Open Source Immunization Evaluation and Forecasting System (7/18, Afternoon Session II, 2:30pm ET).

American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) 2018 National Meeting (August 14-16): As a gold sponsor of the meeting, HLN shows its strong commitment to the Immunization Information System (IIS) community. We will deliver several presentations during this conference, including:

Strategies for Evaluating and Integrating SmartyStreets [with RI] (Session 1B, 8/14, 1pm MT)
IIS Platform or Module Migration – Is Your Program Prepared? [with CDC, AIRA & PHII] (Session 2B, 8/14, 2:30pm MT)
IIS Past, Present, and Future: A Conversation and a Discussion [with PHII] (Session 4E, 8/15, 11am MT)
Comparative Analysis of AFIX-IIS Tools [with CA] (Session 5D, 8/15, 1pm MT)
Cloud-Based Solutions: A Good Option for Hosting CDS for Immunizations (Session 5D, 8/15, 1pm MT)
Vaccines For Children (VFC)-IIS Integration Strategy [with CA] (Session 6E, 8/15, 2pm MT)
ICE: An Open Source Option for Immunization Forecasting (Session 7D, 8/16, 11am MT)
Hearing from Everyone: Diverse Perspectives to Improve Oregon School Immunization Reporting [with OR] (Session 8C, 8/16, 9:45am MT)

HLN will also have an exhibitor booth at the meeting.

2018 Public Health Informatics (PHI) Conference (August 19-23): HLN will have an even greater presence at this bi-annual CDC-sponsored conference including delivery of the following presentations:

Case Study for Cloud Computing Solutions in Public Health: Clinical Decision Support (Session E03, 8/21, 4:15pm ET)
Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS): Developing Quality Decision Support in the Data Supply Chain for Public Health Surveillance [with CSTE] Session B01, 8/21, 10:30am ET)
A Collaborative Approach to Supporting Information System Migration Projects [with CDC, AIRA, & PHII] (Session G01, 8/22, 1:30pm ET)
Clinical Decision Support for Immunizations as a Community-drive, Standards-based Activity [with CDC & NYC] (Session H04, 8/22, 3pm ET)
Developing a Data Integration and Management System: Improving New York City’s Population Health Research and Surveillance [with NYC] (Session H07, 8/22, 3pm ET)
The Changing Face of Interoperability and its Impact on Public Health (Session K11, 8/23, 9:15am ET)

In addition to being an exhibitor at the conference, HLN will demonstrate some of its Open Source software as part of a HIMSS Interoperability Showcase that accompanies this event:

Immunization Use Case – ICE Immunization Evaluation and Forecasting System
Electronic Case Reporting Use Case – Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS)

Health Level 7 (HL7) 32^nd Annual Plenary and Working Group Meeting (9/29-10/5): HLN will attend this important gathering, including demonstrating our Open Source products at the FHIR Connectathon that takes place in conjunction with the meeting.

HLN releases Version 1.13.1 of its Award Winning Open Source Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton June 18, 2018

A new release (v 1.13.1) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) is now available (download ICE version 1.13.1). ICE is a state-of-the-art open-source software system that provides clinical decision support (CDS) for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems.

The release includes support Earliest Date and Overdue Date for additional vaccines: Pneumococcal and Hib. If enabled, ICE will output two additional forecast dates along with the Recommendation Date: the Earliest Date and Overdue Date. The Earliest Date is the soonest date that the vaccine can be given and still be considered valid. The Overdue Date is the date after which an immunization administered would be considered late. With this release, ICE returns the earliest and overdue dates for nine vaccine groups, and the remaining three vaccine groups will be completely supported in a future release of ICE this summer.

In addition, this release includes an adjustment to the Pneumococcal catch-up schedule (see Exception 1B in the Pneumococcal Vaccine Group documentation for details). All changes are documented in the release notes. There were no changes to the ICE Implementation Guide (v2r20) which describes how implementers should update their installation and software to properly read the Earliest, Recommended, and Overdue dates.

Feel free to e-mail us at ice@hln.com if you have any questions.

HLN Signs Letter of Support for AHRQ National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC)

Clinical Decision Support

by Noam Arzton June 18, 2018

On June 1, 2018 HLN signed a letter of support regarding a recent decision by the Agency for Healthcare Quality Research (AHRQ) to end financial support for the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) and terminate its operations as of July 17, 2018. The purpose of the Clearinghouse is to make clinical guidelines easily accessible for clinicians, patients, and clinical decision support (CDS) rules and application developers. Loss of this site – the only freely-available one of its kind – will impact all these stakeholders and make evidenced-based medicine harder to support.

See the full text of the letter.

HLN Attends CSTE 2018 Annual Conference

by Noam Arzton June 14, 2018

HLN attended the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) 2018 Annual Conference in West Palm Beach, FL on June 11-13. Bringing together over 1,750 epidemiologists public health professionals, and associated non-profits and vendors, the conference provided sessions, roundtables, and engagement in a number of areas important to its members. For the first time, HLN was a Bronze sponsor of the conference. “Given our work on Electronic Case Reporting (eCR) we feel it’s critically important to support this event,” commented Dr. Noam Arzt, president of HLN who attended the meeting along with Daryl Chertcoff and Maiko Minami, “This is an energized community, and the opportunity to exchange ideas and insights is beneficial to everyone.”