At its final meeting — during which Chair Paul Egerman sought to put the finishing touches on its upcoming report to the HIT Policy Committee — some members of ONC’s PCAST Report Workgroup chafed at their narrow mandate of only suggesting ways the report’s principles could be integrated with Meaningful Use, not commenting on its […]
Privacy & Security Tiger Team Hunts Balance
The HIT Policy Committee’s new Privacy and Security Tiger Team workgroup is striving to establish the requirements that intermediaries in personal health information (PHI) message transactions will be subject to. Under HIPAA, parties which have access to PHI are deemed covered entities (CEs), required to establish business associate agreements (BAAs) which obligate them to handle the data in certain ways. With the rise of health information exchange under the HITECH Act, the Office of the National Coordinator created the Tiger Team to provide it with guidance in governing health information organizations (HIOs) — or third-party intermediaries which have varying degrees of involvement with the messages.
Gartner: Certification Cannot Dictate Buying Decision
Certification and vendors guarantees to achieve it are little help when choosing products that will qualify for HITECH payments, according to a recently published research note entitled, “The Limits of Certification and Guarantees in Buying Electronic Health Records in the U.S.” by Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Wes Rishel, a member of the HIT Standards […]
Standards Committee Struggles for Balance
Instead of recommending small adjustment to the Standards and Certification Interim Final Rule (IFR), the 10th meeting of the federal HIT Standards Committee was consumed by a fundamental, philosophical debate of just how specific the group should be in its regulations, and the nature of the regulatory process itself. “We have to balance when to […]