Direct Project Pilots Begin Info Exchange
DOD AND VA SHOULD REMOVE BARRIERS
AND IMPROVE EFFORTS TO MEET THEIR
COMMON SYSTEM NEEDS
www.gao.gov/new.items/d11265.pdf
A report from the US Government
Accountability Office continues to
find problems with the EHR initiatives
of the Departments of Defense and
Veterans Affairs. The DOD and VA
lack mechanisms for identifying and
implementing effective IT solutions to
address common healthcare system
needs, according to the report.
HEALTH BENEFIT EXCHANGES: SEAMLESS
ENROLLMENT AND AFFORDABLE COVERAGE
www.csc.com
A white paper from CSC examines
state health insurance exchanges
getting federal Affordable Care Act
funds to launch. It finds that meeting
the design and mandate challenges
imposed by the Affordable Care Act
while offering value-added service and
support to customers and suppliers
is critical to establishing sustainable
long-term exchange solutions.
MANY PHYSICIANS ARE WILLING TO USE
PATIENTS’ ELECTRONIC PERSONAL HEALTH
RECORDS, BUT DOCTORS DIFFER BY
LOCATION, GENDER, AND PRACTICE
http://content.healthaffairs.org
A study published in the February
2011 issue of Health Affairs finds that
healthcare providers vary significantly
in their experience with personal health
records and their willingness to use the
tools in their practices. It concluded
that financial incentives would be
necessary to encourage physician
adoption of PHRs.
The Direct Project, formerly known
as NHIN Direct, has been used to exchange a first set of live health information, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).
During a press event on February
2, Direct Project supporters from the
White House, ONC, and Health and
Human Services announced that two
of six pilot sites have launched data exchange using the project’s standards
and specifications for secure, direct
data exchange over the Internet.
Since mid-January, the Hennepin
County Medical Center, based in Minnesota, has been successfully
sending immunization records
to the Minnesota Department of Health using the
Direct format. The
Rhode Island
Quality
Institute is using the Direct Project for
provider-to-provider data exchange,
specifically when giving patient referrals. The Rhode Island Quality Institute
also is feeding clinical information to
the state’s HIE, with patient consent.
During the event, Microsoft announced that its PHR HealthVault is
now Direct Project compatible, meaning physicians can directly input patient information into accounts using
Direct Project specifications.
David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health IT, said the launch of
the Direct Project is like opening up a
major highway lane that everyone
with electronic records can use to
exchange data. Other forms of
information exchange, like HIE
or the Nationwide Health Information Network, can build on
to this lane and reach “more remote destinations,” he said.
The federal government is promoting the Direct Project as an easy and
simple means for electronic data exchange that can also meet meaningful
use stage 1 objectives. ¢
HIMSS ANNUAL 5010/ICD- 10 SURVEY
www.mbproject.org
According to a survey by HIMSS, more
than a third of healthcare providers do
not have a conversion program in place
to transition to the 5010 electronic
financial transaction standards. At
least two-thirds of respondents said
they used resources to meet federal
meaningful use requirements instead
of on projects to switch financial
transaction standards. ¢
Feds Seeking HIE Breakthroughs
Ten state HIEs will receive federal funding to develop “breakthrough” initiatives that can accelerate health information exchange.
Funded by the Office of the National
Coordinator for Health IT, the Health
Information Exchange Challenge Program will pay awards of $1 million to
$2 million per recipient for the development of information exchange technology and new approaches to HIE.
The program focuses on five challenge areas that ONC identified as key
needs. The pilot sites must develop
and share solutions for the challenges
to “increase nationwide interoperability,” according to the grant statement.
The challenge areas are:
1. Achieving health goals through
health information exchange
2. Improving long-term and post-acute care transitions
3. Giving patients access to their
own health information
4. Developing tools and approaches
to search for and share granular
patient data (such as specific lab
results for a given time period)
5. Fostering strategies for popula-
tion-level analysis
The program, announced in Decem-
ber, expected to begin payments in
February. The grants are being pro-
vided as supplemental funding to HIEs
included in the federal government’s
State Health Information Exchange
Cooperative agreements, which has al-
ready provided more than $500 million
to states to develop HIE programs. ¢
