Data interoperability and Workforce Development - S&I frameworks meetings EU-US Conference

Data interoperability and Workforce Development - S&I frameworks meetings

I thought I might follow up this a just a bit on what went on with these meetings. Originally we were going to present some results from our meetings on these topics. However the government shutdown put a crimp in those plans. So we met in both groups with whoever attended to go over case studies and have some dialog on the topic.  The data meeting was pretty small however Dr. Jaffe Ceo of HL7 came in and basically had a roundtable discussion on a variety of topics. We did review our case studies and got some consensus on the topics.

•Scenario 1: Moving From Country to Country & Immunizations

•Scenario 2: Broken Eyeglasses

•Scenario 3: Planned Care

•Scenario 4: Patient has a heart attack and ends up in the ER (or patient is hit by a car)

•Scenario 5: Group of students traveling with someone acting on behalf of, or in the place of, a parent, legal guardian, patient, or subject who needs to obtain medical records for treatment

•Scenario 6: Ran out of/forgot prescription medication while on vacation and need it refilled (for example blood pressure medication)

•Scenario 7: Ambulatory (patient has pre-existing condition such as diabetes that has been out of control and needs to be addressed.

#1 and #2 weren't very popular. There was considerable discussion to combine a few of the other topics together. A moderator from ONC took down the comments and will use them for the next meeting.

Workforce was much better attended and have a large amount of folks from the EU present. What I found fascinating was the big difference between the EU and US where it comes to education and employment.  In the EU what you get your degree in is what you stay in for a career path for the most part. Not always the case here in the US. Also many governmental jobs require masters degrees which also will eliminate younger workers.  Here in the US usually it is experience more than the degree.  The question of how will match job skills and roles to some type of standard was bantered around. ONC talked about the Meaningful use cert .  It appears there was interest on both sides at looking at certification based program. We'll see where this leads.

 

Update on the EU - US Conference Update 10/24/13

Well I have to say I was really happy that I went.  Sometime things just work out on a conference once in a while.  The S&I frameworks groups I was working on did meet and we had some pretty interesting conversations. The irony that only a couple of people attended the. However I got to talk to Charles Jaffe the CEO of HL7 for basically 3 hours one on one as we discussed case studies, C-CDA and a bunch of other topics. It was worth the price of admission for that.  I did meet up with Dr.Fridsma(Chief Science Officer, Office of Science and Technology)  and his team from the ONC during the workforce development meetings.  I learned alot of how healthcare is done in the EU. Their private/public relationships are very different than what we have here in the US. Their rules and regulations are also very different. It's not say we don't have common ground but have a long way to go to understanding how we can find areas of common intersection.

More to follow

3rd EU-US eHealth Business Marketplace and Conference This week

Well I'm attending this conference. I'm part of the EU-US MOU - Call-to Action and Roadmap Work Streams to support EU-US Collaboration. Basically in a nutshell we are trying to find some ways to unify standards to allow for the exchange of healthcare between the two groups.  

Interoperability of Health Records

• Dr. Larry Garber, Medical Director for Informatics, Reliant Medical Group
• Catherine E. Chronaki, Secretary General HL7 International Foundation

 International Workforce Development

• Mary Cleary, Deputy CEO, Irish Computer Society Skills, Ireland

• Stathis Konstantinidis, Research Scientist, Norut – Northern Research Institute, Norway

Are the two areas I've helped a tiny bit on so I'm pretty curious on what is being presented.  

Data Quality Team and Compliance

I'm going to go off and talk a bit on Data Quality Teams and Compliance.  I think there is a constant struggle about who owns the data and who is responsible for it.  Data Quality teams began to get some attention a few years ago in the US and you are starting to see the trend in the EU. Typically the Data Quality team resided under the IT or operations wing and it was put in place to review data going in and out of systems for completeness and accuracy.  It was basically a check to what the day to day operations folks were doing and to catch issues.  I'm going to suggest leveraging these teams if they exist to do compliance reviews.  Who owns the DQT  is always a good question. Being part of IT doesn't really give it independence and I really don't think a compliance team would have a budget for them.  Being part of operations makes sense but there is usually a struggle about cost and value they bring to a organization. Smaller companies I really don't see being able to do this. However with EMR,EHR,Billing and PHA data all going into multiple systems you really need some sort of audit process in place. Also you need to think about HIE's and making sure the data gets and audit before it gets into those systems.  Unique ID trackers are going to be required...  So is your head spinning?  Not only are you going to need legal, clinical and regulatory experience on your team but now also IT?   I see alot of blended roles here and that leads to confusion on independence and oversight. Is your data analysis on loan to you from IT  really trying to make sure IT or Compliance is happy? Who pays the salary and does the review? It's all questions you need to ask.

Compliance and Data - The Emerging Alliance

Compliance and Data - The Emerging Alliance

Last year I mentioned a few times the importance of having compliance involved in data collection and analysis. At the HCCA regional conference in Boston this month this came up as a topic several times. In order to provide evidence of compliance for various state and federal programs you need to provide data evidence.  How would a compliance officer be able to verify with impartiality that the information is correct?  The term data quality compliance analyst came up and I think its worth looking at. Most compliance folks have a clinical or legal background(my background is technical so I must be the extreme minority) and a database is a complete mystery to them.  Frankly I would look  at anything IT gives you with extreme prejudice. IT doesn't look at things from a compliance standpoint and usually regards most regulatory concerns as a burden and not a requirement. Most Health IT organizations have Data Analysts and these skills do bleed over a bit.  However they report to IT and this may be a conflict of interest. You are starting to see the establishment of Data Quality Teams and Data Governance. I would highly suggest talking about establishing these teams or getting involved with them.  You need to talk to your CIO on this.  You will be surprised he probably knows more than you think about this.  IT information security it usually part of the CIO's office and they are getting hit constantly with HIPAA regulations. Talking data compliance and review may spark some serious cross organizational discussions.   

The demise of Performance Reporting with the NCQA Disease Management Accreditation

Well with life some things just fade away. With NCQA's announcement that that it will not be continuing with DM Performance measures in 2014 that will end the certification for the few companies that achieved this.  Well what happen? This program seem to have so much promise and then NCQA began to back off with making DM organization from making it mandatory to not required. It was being cited that it was too hard for companies to implement. However as the changes to supplemental went into effect it became quite clear that these two were related.  If member supplied data wasn't valid for HEDIS then it didn't make sense for DM companies to keep collecting because it wasn't considered reliable.  It's too bad because I don't think any time was spent studying if companies tracking DM measures had better results for their matching HEDIS measures. Once 2015 hits the last DM performance certification will fade into the sunset.

At HCCA New England Conference today!!

Looking forward to the discussions for the day