HLN Consulting, LLC – Innovators in Public Health Informatics

HLN Presents ICE at Fall 2018 Centricity Users Group (CHUG) Meeting

by Noam Arzton November 12, 2018

On November 10, 2018 at the Centricity Healthcare User Group (CHUG) Fall meeting HLN partnered with Health One Technologies (Health1) and Allied Physicians Group (Mellville, NY) to discuss and demonstrate an implementation of GE Centricity that provides real-time decision support at the point of care using ICE, HLN’s Open Source immunization evaluation and forecasting system.

Health1 has over fifteen years experience implementing and optimizing EHRs in physician offices, hospitals, and specialty clinics. With HLN’s assistance, Health1 recently completed an integration between GE Centricity and ICE using a “helper service” that accepts a text file input from Centricity, and translates the evaluations back out in a text file output from ICE. A forecast section was then added to the existing immunization form in Centricity to display the additional data.

Allied Physicians Group is a single specialty pediatric group with 35 practices, 150 providers, 150,000 patients, and 600 users. Evaluation and forecasts from ICE are improving their ability to manage immunization administration and planning more effectively.

See presentation slides.

Dr. Noam Arzt named Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association

by Noam Arzton November 1, 2018

Dr. Noam H. Arzt, president of HLN Consulting, LLC, has been named a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Dr. Arzt joins 129 of his colleagues in the inaugural class of fellows. The fellowshiip was created to recognize AMIA members who apply informatics skills and knowledge within their professional setting, who have demonstrated professional achievement and leadership, and who have contributed to the betterment of the organization.

A member of AMIA since 1998, Dr. Arzt has been a leader in public health informatics for many years. He has been active in various AMIA task forces and workgroups, and has been a speaker at AMIA conferences, events, and webinars. “I feel honored to be recognized by my peers. AMIA is the premier medical informatics organization, and I look forward to continuing engagement with my colleagues to promote excellence in our field,” said Dr. Arzt.

“The establishment of FAMIA marks a watershed moment for the profession of health informatics,” said Douglas B. Fridsma, MD, PhD, FACP, FACMI, AMIA President and CEO. “This credential is the new hallmark of applied informatics professionals. Professionals who brandish FAMIA signal to patients, employers, and colleagues that they are steeped in evidence-based practice and engaged with a community of life-long learners who apply the latest advances in informatics to improve health and health care.”

New Fellows will be inducted into FAMIA at the AMIA 2019 Clinical Informatics Conference, in Atlanta, April 30 – May 2, 2019.

For more information on the AMIA Fellowship program, see the official AMIA press release.

ONC EHR Reporting Program RFI: A Public Health Perspective

by Noam Arzton September 12, 2018

On August 24, 2018, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a Request for Information (RFI) related to the EHR Reporting Program. This RFI is required by the 21st Century Cures Act and its primary purpose is to gather ideas and suggestions related to how ONC might provide better information about Certified EHR Technology (CEHRT).

Apparently, the initial intention was to create a “star rating” like the type used in Consumer Reports to use to rate EHRs, but that seems to have been abandoned in favor of some kind of measurement system. But it is far from clear exactly how this would be done. There may be something to learn from the Immunization Information System (IIS) community: with guidance from the CDC, the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) initiated a process to help assess compliance of IIS with national functional standards through a formal measurement and improvement initiative. “Validation,” rather than “certification” or “compliance,” is the carefully-chosen term to signify a system meeting the designated measures through formal testing. The process is interactive, and the results are only made public with the agreement of the IIS program. Perhaps some of the concepts and processes in this initiative can be useful for the EHR Reporting Program.

Frankly, there is not much of interest in here for public health, which is not in the business of worrying about CEHRT. Of course, the quality and functionality of EHR products does impact their effectiveness in supporting interoperability with public health registries. To that end, the RFI does as some questions towards the end (p. 42918) about additional information that might be useful for prospective purchasers of CEHRT, including “Submitting, editing, and retrieving data from registries, such as clinician-led clinical data registries.”

ONC asks for how they might prioritize including information related to this in EHR Reporting as well as data sources for reporting about this. It may be useful for public health to weigh in on these questions; comments are due no later than 5 p.m. on October 17, 2018 at the Federal eRulemaking Portal.

CMS MIPS PI NPRM: A Public Health Perspective

by Noam Arzton September 6, 2018

See my HIMSS blog and our formal comments on this NPRM!

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 Re visions 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 (PI) 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.

PHI2018 Conference: eCR Rules!

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by Noam Arzton August 24, 2018

On August 20-23, 2018 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) sponsored the now-biennial Public Health Informatics Conference in Atlanta, GA. Nearly 1,000 public health informatics professionals, vendors, and other stakeholders came together to discuss and learn from each other about new and emerging trends in informatics practice, successful (and less than successful) projects and strategies, and new or existing products to help in their work. The conference exhibit space included a mini-Interoperability Showcase co-sponsored by HIMSS that demonstrated ten interoperability use cases relevant to public health and their data partners in the clinical community.