The February HIT Standards Committee Meeting

The February HIT Standards Committee focused on the Committee workplan for 2013.

Farzad Mostashari offered introductory remarks.   He noted that we need to build the foundation for stage 3 while also focusing on the implementation of stage 2.   The industry is feeling overwhelmed with meaningful use, ICD10, and ACO formation all occurring simultaneously.   Ensuring we get stage 2 right is our first priority.

A consistent theme in rest of the meeting was the need for more time to build the technology foundation for future stages of meaningful use.   As Jon Perlin put it, we cannot order the Christmas ornaments until we have the tree.

Doug Fridsma provided an overview of the S&I Initiative progress and presented the draft HITSC workplan with subcommittee assignments.    Doug and ONC staff took the 5 general categories of work, each with 5 themes that we discussed at the January meeting and organized the work based on the maturity and readiness of the standards needed.

Arien Malec offered an even better approach than ordering the work based on standards availability.  He said:

"What I would like to see is a coordinated statement between HITPC and HITSC that outlines the following elements:
1. Capability that needs to be broadly adopted to support national goals
2. Programmatic alignment for that capability (e.g., MU3/4, ACO/PCMH, etc.) both at the Federal/state and commercial levels
3. Suggested timeline for adoption of the capability (where the timeline includes stakeholder alignment, standards development, technology development, deployment, and adoption)

From that overall plan, we can derive the individual HITSC work plan."

The committee discussed this and agreed with his proposal.  The next step will be for the HITSC workgroup chairs and the policy committee to reaffirm the priorities of Meaningful Use stage 3 then we'll reorder the categories and themes of standards work  to align with policy imperatives.   We will also develop a timeline and may suggest to ONC that a stage 3 NPRM not be issued in 2013 to enable foundational technology work to be done first.

Next Jodi Daniel presented an overview of the public comment to the Policy Committee RFC. Comments on Meaningful Use issues were summarized by Michelle Consolazio Nelson.   Comments on Information Exchange were summarized by Kory Mertz.   Comments on Quality Measures were summarized by Jesse James.  Comments on Privacy and Security were summarized by Will Phelps.

Next I summarized, the recent Health Information Exchange Hearing with these slides.    Many made comments that View interoperability is gaining in popularity in addition to push (Direct) and pull (NwHIN Exchange)

Finally, Doug Fridsma and Jodi Daniel updated the group on ONC activities, ensuring coordination with Policy Committee initiatives.

It's clear that we have significant work ahead.  By next month, we'll have scope, timelines and resource proposals for getting it done in support of national priorities.