New This Week on HealthIT.gov
In This Issue
Happy Friday! To help get the word out about a new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) program, we are highlighting a newly launched program called the Open Payments Program, which stems from the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
CMS Open Payments Program As part of the Open Payments Program, CMS will soon make data about the financial relationships between drug/device manufacturers and physicians and teaching hospitals available to the public. Physicians are defined as doctors of medicine and osteopathy, dental surgeons, dentists, licensed chiropractors, optometrists, and podiatrists, under the Act.
Open Payments registration for physicians and teaching hospitals in the CMS Enterprise Portal and the Open Payments system is open. Although registration is a voluntary process, it is required if physicians or teaching hospitals want to review the data reported about them, by the industry, prior to public posting of the data on September 30, 2014.
Registration, review, and data submission for physicians and teaching hospitals will be conducted in two phases for this first reporting year: Phase 1 includes user registration in the CMS Enterprise Portal to request access to the Open Payments system
Phase 2 includes physician and teaching hospital registration in the Open Payments system, and allows them to review and dispute data submitted by manufacturers and group purchasing organizations (GPOs) prior to public posting of the data.
Phase 1 & 2 registration is underway. Data review and submission for the 2013 year ends August 27, 2014. Physicians can learn more about requirements, how to access and register in the Open Payments system, and get access to education materials and other resources on the Physicians web page of the Open Payments website. CMS has also developed a brochure about the program to be shared with patients.
An updated mobile app is also available to help physicians or teaching hospitals track payments and other transfers of value they receive from manufacturers and GPOs throughout the year. The app is voluntary, free, and can be downloaded at the Google Play app store or iOSApple app store (search for "Open Payments"). Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of July 28 Monday
The Health IT Standards Committee's (HITSC) Implementation Workgroup meets Monday at 10am (all times Eastern).
Thursday
The JASON Task Force meets Thursday at 2pm. The agenda and meeting materials will be posted as soon as they are available. New Federal Advisory Committee Pages As part of our efforts to streamline the work of the Federal Advisory Committees (FACAs): the Health IT Policy Committee (HITPC) and Health IT Standards Committee (HITSC) and the Committees' workgroups, we have taken steps to make sure that their work aligns with our strategic direction and policy priorities.
Over the past 10 years, we have seen significant improvement in the adoption and use of certified electronic health record technology, due in great part to the work of the FACAs and the dedicated efforts of the workgroups. Through their hard work, we've been able to better support collaboration across the entire health IT and health care communities and expect those collaborative efforts to continue to build diverse perspectives into the future. The newly formed workgroups can now be found on our updated website. Meet Bonnie! The Bonnie Clinical Quality Measure Testing Tool, version 1.1, was updated July 24 to support new measure formats and logic constructs and includes: - Health Quality Measures Format (HQMF) release 2.1 measure import
- Measure Authoring Tool (MAT) SimpleXML measure import
- Support for QDM V4.1 constructs including:
- Variable assignments
- Inline comments
- Satisfies Any / Satisfies All operators
- New temporal operators
The introduction of HQMF R2.1 import allows loading measures represented in the updated version of the HQMF specification. The introduction of MAT SimpleXML measure imports allows the continued testing of measures in Bonnie while the MAT develops support for HQMF R2 export. Finally, the support for QDM V4.1 in Bonnie allows testing Clinical Quality Measures that take advantage of the latest QDM constructs and operators.
Bonnie is designed to support streamlined and efficient pretesting of eCQMs used in the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. Bonnie can be used by measure developers as part of their development process to provide specific feedback on the behavior of the CQM logic. Additionally, vendors may see a benefit when testing measure implementation into EHRs either by using a test deck built by a measure developer, or since Bonnie is an open source tool, by building its own patient test deck. Bonnie is co-sponsored by ONC and CMS and has been developed by MITRE. Health Informatics Fellowship ONC is pleased to announce a paid medical informatics fellowship for physicians! Apply until 8/21/2014 to work in the Office of Clinical Quality and Safety at ONC for 1-2 years working on interoperability, quality improvement, and clinical decision support. New ONC Quick Stats Curious about participation in the Medicare EHR Incentive Program? The Health IT Dashboard has a pair of new Quick Stats that visualize the trends of eligible professional participation from 2011 to 2013. The diagrams provide a nuanced look at participation, giving the viewer insight into the number of providers participating each year, and providing break-outs of those professionals that choose to participate each year and those that don't.
Quick Stat #31: Attestation Patterns among Medicare Professionals who First Attested to Meaningful Use in 2011 visualizes the initial group of professionals who began participating in 2011. This diagram of early adopters provides an in depth visualization of attrition AND return in this group that was the first to demonstrate Meaningful Use.
Quick Stat #32: Medicare Professional Stage 1 Meaningful Use Attestation, 2011-2013 visualizes the movement of Medicare professionals in and out of the EHR Incentive Program from 2011 to 2013, incorporating adopters who first attested to MU in 2012 and 2013. Resource Repository Updated The 11 Privacy and Security tools on the Health IT Implementation Resources Page have been rated 431 times. Download them, share them, let us know what you think!
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