Industry Articles of Note

If you want a say in how the government deals with health data interoperability, now's your chance. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has released draft rules for a health information sharing plan, called the Trusted Exchange Framework, and the public has until Feb. 18, 2018 to comment.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) recently announced the winners of the Patient Matching Algorithm Challenge. Just Associates played a key role in the Challenge, providing the data set that was used to evaluate submissions. The ONC selected the winning submissions from over 140 competing teams and almost 7,000 submissions. Just Associates congratulates the winners of the Challenge on a job well done!

The 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) was signed into law on December 13, 2016. It was designed to help accelerate medical product development and bring new innovations and advances to patients who need them faster and more efficiently. It also includes provisions that impacted HIM and HIT, including requirements directing the General Accounting Office to assess efforts and the relative effectiveness in the private sector in correctly matching a patient to their information. Prepared by AHIMA, this is a summarization of those areas that HIM and HIT professionals should note.

For many years, health information management (HIM) professionals have been responsible for locating a complete patient record in a timely manner to provide a solid foundation for clinical decision making. When one healthcare system started noticing a high rate of duplicate records in their records system, they got creative in their approach to fixing the problem.