The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT wants public input on criteria that would be used to craft certification criteria for electronic health records.
The agency has issued a request for information on criteria to measure the performance of certified electronic health record technology, as required by the 21st Century Cures Act.
The law is meant to create greater transparency in the certification process by establishing an EHR Reporting Program, which would require health IT vendors to attest that their products conform with certain performance criteria.
ONC’s request for information focuses on the Cures Act’s five mandatory criteria associated with the EHR Reporting Program: security; interoperability; usability and user-centered design; conformance to certification testing; and other categories—as appropriate—to measure the performance of certified EHR technology.
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
In addition, the Cures Act also suggests several other categories for consideration on the EHR Reporting Program, including: enabling users to order and view results of laboratory tests, imaging tests and other diagnostic tests; exchanging data with clinical registries; accessing and exchanging data from medical devices, health information exchanges and other healthcare providers; as well as accessing and exchanging data held by federal, state and local agencies.
“Given the wide range of data that is reported to HHS and other agencies, we seek to avoid duplicate reporting through the EHR Reporting Program,” states ONC’s RFI. “We are interested in stakeholders’ input on information already available from health IT acquisition decision makers and users who report to federal programs that could be re-used and factored into the EHR Reporting Program. We are particularly interested in any data reported by providers participating in Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services programs since they can be considered verified users of certified health IT.”
While ONC has focused its questions on the five mandatory categories from the Cures Act, the agency states in its RFI that the public is “welcome to comment on any of the additional categories.” Comments will be accepted until October 17 at 5 p.m. ET.
Date: August 27, 2018
Source: HealthDataManagement