HLN Consulting, LLC – Innovators in Public Health Informatics

HLN to Participate in HIMSS19 Interoperability Showcase

by Noam Arzton January 16, 2019

For the third straight year, HLN Consulting will participate in the Interoperability Showcase at this year’s HIMSS19 Global Conference and Exhibition which is being held in Orlando, FL from February 11-15, 2019. The Showcase itself runs on February 12-14. This year HLN will participate in two use cases:

Immunization Integration & CDS: HLN’s award-winning ICE Immunization Evaluation and Forecasting System will be featured supporting two different EHRs as a sample patient moves through a scenario of lifelong immunizations.

Opioid Crisis, the Person & the Population: HLN’s Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS) will be featured as the decision support component of electronic case reporting (eCR) in this scenario about drug overdose.

Come see us in Hall F, Booth 9100 at the Orange County Convention Center.

See full press release

ONC Releases 2018 HITECH Report

by Noam Arzton January 16, 2019

In early January the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued its annual report to Congress for 2018 on the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and interoperability. This report is required under the HITECH Act and is further informed by requirements of the later 21st Century Cures Act.

There was actually very little to comment about in this report, and it felt more like ONC was “going through the motions.” There were a few (actually, very few) updated statistics about technology use, a short discussion about the importance of open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and a useful but not terribly new list of initiatives and reports issued by ONC over the past year or two. I spotted one or two things in there that I had not recalled seeing before but nothing terribly important.

One thing that I think is notable was a short discussion about barriers to interoperability that we have heard before. The report identifies three types: technical barriers, financial barriers, and trust barriers. Within trust barriers the report mentions legal incentives to keep data from moving (I guess that would have better been phrased as legal disincentives to sharing), but this misses the point: It is the patchwork of inconsistent and incompatible State and local laws and regulations – not intentional information blocking – that presents a bigger challenge and barrier. These can be laws prohibiting movement of certain health data across state lines, incompatible consent requirements, or restrictions on “downstream” use of data that is shared. Until these legal barriers are addressed separate from trust issues interoperability will be hampered.

HHS Releases Landmark Report: Reforming America’s Healthcare System

by Noam Arzton January 6, 2019

On December 3, 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an extensive, 120-page report on the administration’s proposals to reform the healthcare system. The report, titled Reforming America’s Healthcare System Through Choice and Competition, is divided into four major sections. The report that government policy of the last few years has suppressed competition, increased prices for healthcare, and limited choices for consumers. Though rich in detail as it tries to prove each of these points, the more than fifty recommendations are often broad and aspirational rather than practical.

Since I am not a health economist, I will leave the market issues to others to discuss (many of the ideas in this report have been vetted and discussed by others previously). But there are two sections of the report which make direct mention of Health IT.

HLN Sponsors ISDS 2019 Annual Conference

by Noam Arzton January 2, 2019

HLN is pleased to be a Patron-level sponsor of the 18th Annual International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) Annual Meeting being held in San Diego, CA from January 30 – February 1, 2019. This conference expects to bring together more than 400 participants with over 220 presentations and ten workshops dedicated to the advancement of the science and practice of biosurveillance.

HLN will be attending the meeting with a table in the exhibit area as well as two presentations:

Strategies for Clinical Decision Support for Electronic Case Reporting, January 30, 10am PT

Automated Immunization Surveillance: Using Business Intelligence to Improve Up-to-Date Rates, with our colleagues from Denver Public Health, January 31, 2019 at 1pm PT

We look forward to see you all there in San Diego!

A Public Health Perspective ONC’s Strategy to Reduce Burden on Physicians

by Noam Arzton December 19, 2018

On November 28, 2018 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a draft Strategy on Reducing Regulatory and Administrative Burden Relating to the Use of Health IT and EHRs for public comment. The strategy aims to reduce the time and effort and improve the functionality of electronic health records (EHRs) for clinicians, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations.

This strategy was developed primarily through the efforts of ONC-convened workgroups in response to requirements laid out by Congress in the 21st Century Cures Act (Section 13103). The report itself does not identify who exactly served on these workgroups and what organizations were represented.