Information Exchange Workgroup Recommendations to HIT Policy Committee

October 3, 2012

Micky Tripathi, Larry Garber

Workgroup Membership• Micky Tripathi (Chair) Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative • Hunt Blair Vermont Medicaid • Tim Cromwell Department of Veterans Affairs • Peter DeVault Epic• Jeff Donnell No More Clipboards • Judy Faulkner Epic • Seth Foldy Centers for Disease Control and Prevention• Jonah Frohlich Manatt • Larry Garber Reliant Medical Group • Dave Goetz OptumInsight • James Golden Minnesota Department of Health • Jessica Kahn Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services • Charles Kennedy Aetna • Ted Kremer Rochester RHIO • Arien Malec RelayHealth • Deven McGraw Center for Democracy & Technology • Stephanie Reel John Hopkins University • Cris Ross Mayo Clinic• Steven Stack AMA • Christopher Tashjian River Falls Medical Clinics • Jon Teichrow Mirth Corporation • Amy Zimmerman Rhode Island Office of Health & Human Services

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Query for Patient Information - Rationale

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Stage 2 of Meaningful Use requires EPs, EHs & CAHs to send care summaries when patients are transitioned to another setting, with more than 10% of those summaries required to be sent digitally using certified EHR technology. The 2014 EHR Certification criteria require EHRs to have the capability to perform this function. Those criteria will help EPs, EHs & CAHs digitally transmit care summaries in circumstances where the recipient is known (or can be located through a provider directory). But these criteria will not help providers locate patient records in circumstances where the transition was unplanned. With unplanned transitions, the record holder doesn’t know in advance about the transition and/or doesn’t have the patient present to obtain authorization for release. The most common use case where this occurs is when a patient arrives in an emergency room; but there could be other circumstances where providers have a need to query a patient’s record in order to provide optimal treatment. Certified EHRs should have the capability to enable EPs, EHs & CAHs to query for a patient’s record and request that records relevant to treatment be sent.

Query for Patient Information (EHR Certification Criteria)

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Proposed Criteria for the next phase of EHR Certification:1. The EHR must be able to query another entity* for outside records and respond to such queries. This query may consist of three transactions:• Patient query based on demographics and other available identifiers, as well as the requestor and

purpose of request.• Query for a document list based for an identified patient• Request a specific set of documents from the returned document list*the outside entity may be another EHR system, a health information exchange, or an entity on the NwHIN, for example. 2. When receiving in inbound patient query, the EHR must be able to:• Tell the querying system whether patient authorization is required to retrieve the patient’s records and

where to obtain the authorization language**. (E.g. if authorization is already on file at the record-holding institution it may not be required).

• At the direction of the record-holding institution, respond with a list of the patient’s releasable documents based on patient’s authorization

• At the direction of the record-holding institution, release specific documents with patient’s authorization 3. The EHR initiating the query must be able to query an outside entity** for the authorization language to be presented to and signed by the patient or her proxy in order to retrieve the patient’s records. Upon the patient signing the form, the EHR must be able to send, based on the preference of the record-holding institution, either:• a copy of the signed form to the entity requesting it• an electronic notification attesting to the collection of the patient’s signature **Note: The authorization text may come from the record-holding EHR system, or, at the direction of the patient or the record-holding EHR, could be located in a directory separate from the record-holding EHR system, and so a query for authorization language would need to be directable to the correct endpoint.

Query Provider Directory (EHR Certification Criteria)

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Rationale:Provider directory queries which facilitate Direct messaging and queries, support the following priorities:

– Improved care coordination– Reduces readmission, redundant testing– Improves patient safety– Facilitates “hassle-free” health information exchange

Request for Comment for EHR Certification with these additional questions:• Are there sufficiently mature standards in place to support this criteria? What implementation of these standards are in place and what has the experience been?

Proposed Criteria for the next phase of EHR Certification: The EHR must be able to query a Provider Directory external to the EHR to obtain entity-level addressing information (e.g. push or pull addresses).

Data Portability Between EHR Vendors (RFC)

Request for Comment for EHR Certification:• What criteria should be added to the next phase of

EHR Certification to further facilitate healthcare providers’ ability to switch from using one EHR to another vendor’s EHR?

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