On December 5, 2019, Michael Suralik, project manager at HLN, attended The Sequoia Project’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. TEFCA and Information Blocking were the big topics of the day. It was a very substantive meeting and there was vibrant back and forth discussion and exchange of ideas between and among the presenters and the other meeting participants (see this report that summarizes the meeting).
On August 21 and 22, 2019 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) held its third Interoperability Forum in Washington, DC. More than 600 individuals participated in person with many others viewing the general sessions via webinar. The conference began and ended with half-day plenary sessions while providing five tracks with smaller sessions in between. I attended the Health Information Exchange (HIE)/Community-based Information Exchange (CIE) breakout session on both days.
| See our final comments on the TEFCA v2 Draft |
On April 17, 2019 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released the second draft of its Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) for comment. The initial version was released more than a year ago in January 2018 (see my original blog). As before, this is in response to a requirement imposed by Congress in the 21st Century Cures Act. After a somewhat lengthy (but well written) introduction, the document contains three parts (compared to just two parts the first time around):
HLN participated in the 2019 California Immunization Coalition Summit held on April 8-9. 2019 in Riverside, CA. For over twelve years, the CIC Summit has brought together partners and colleagues from throughout California and beyond to share ideas, highlight successes, and identify partnerships.
This year HLN’s president, Dr. Noam Arzt, delivered two talks during breakout sessions at the summit:
Several hundred stakeholders from around California attended this important event.
| See our final comments on the ONC NPRM and the CMS NPRM Patient Matching RFI |
On February 11, 2019 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released its latest Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to Improve the Interoperability of Health Information. Referred to by some people as the “Information Blocking NPRM,” since this was the primary topic anticipated, the document actually covers a host of other topics related to interoperability driven primarily by requirements of the 21st Century Cures Act. Besides the initial text of the NPRM, ONC also released a set of summary slides and fact sheets to help explain the document.
Given the relatively minimal mention of core public health reporting certification criteria in this NPRM, there is still a fairly large potential impact on public health. Topics, descriptions, issues, impacts, and potential opportunities discussed in this article and associated documents are based on our careful read of the NPRM and related material. But please note that this information is voluminous and at times confus
ing. Ongoing discussion and review will attempt to clarify (and if necessary correct) initial ideas presented here.
In order to help focus the reader, I have prepared a detailed table of Public Health Issues, Impacts, and Opportunities (currently at Version 15) which will be updated periodically, as well as a separate detailed response to the ONC Patient Matching RFI and CMS Patient Matching RFI.