Health Story Project: Exchange Basic Records & Meet Early Meaningful Use Requirements

Please join the Health Story Project for a special webinar presentation Wednesday, December 1, 2010; 10:00-11:00 AM Eastern.

Over a billion clinical notes are created by physicians in the U.S. each year. With standards, the output can easily integrate with EMRs/HIEs and provide a glide path to interoperability. The Health Story Project is an industry collaboration working to accelerate the development and adoption of standards for electronic clinical documents using HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and Continuity of Care Document (CCD) templates. Learn how use of these standards support ARRA requirements for meaningful use for exchanging basic records - even prior to EMR system adoption. And, discover the benefits of the Health Story approach, including minimal disruption to workflow, physician acceptance, leveraging current technology investments and offering easy access to the right information. Can your system support this strategy? Learn how to get started.

Presenters include Bob Dolin, MD, Chair, HL7 International and Principal, Semantically Yours, LLC and Liora Alschuler, Health Story Executive Committee Member and Principal, Alschuler Associates, LLC.

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Please let us know if you are interested in an update yet unable to make the webinar.

Brought to you by:
Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI)
Clinical Documentation Industry Association (CDIA)
The Health Story Project
HL7 International

On behalf of the Health Story Project
Integrating Narrative Notes and the EHR
www.healthstory.com

Health Story Project Founder Lands Contract with ONC

Alschuler Associates, a founding partner and executive committee member of The Health Story Project, was recently awarded a contract (in partnership with Deloitte, LLC) with the Office for the National Coordinator (ONC) to support standards development and harmonization of EHR adoption/integration. The selection of a Health Story Project administrator in this role is important news to the healthcare documentation sector at a time when having advocates for codified narrative in the EHR is so critical to this sector’s messaging about preservation of the patient story. Alschuler will be uniquely positioned to impact dialogue around certification of EHRs and the integration of narrative reporting in the adoption strategy of providers seeking solutions that meet meaningful use criteria. AHDI extends its congratulations to Liora Alschuler for this accomplishment.

Join the Health Story Project for a Special Webinar

WHAT: The Health Story Project: Exchange Basic Records and Meet Early Meaningful Use Requirements

WHEN: Wednesday, July 21, 2010; 1:00-2:00 PM Central

AGENDA: Over a billion clinical notes are created by physicians in the U.S. each year. With standards, the output can easily integrate with EMRs/HIEs and provide a glide path to interoperability. The Health Story Project is an industry collaboration working to accelerate the development and adoption of standards for electronic clinical documents using HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and Continuity of Care Document (CCD) templates. Learn how use of these standards support ARRA requirements for meaningful use for exchanging basic records - even prior to EMR system adoption. And, discover the benefits of the Health Story approach, including minimal disruption to workflow, physician acceptance, leveraging current technology investments and offering easy access to the right information. Can your system support this strategy? Learn how to get started.

PRESENTERS: Bob Dolin, MD, Chair, Health Level Seven and Principal, Semantically Yours, LLC and Liora Alschuler, Health Story Executive Committee Member and Principal, Alschuler Associates, LLC
Please let us know if you are interested in an update yet unable to make the webinar.

REGISTER: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/549972714

Mapping Hospital Readiness for Meaningful Use

The HIMSS Analytics Study now includes questions on hospital readiness for Meaningful Use, including use of structured templates developed by the Health Story Project

CHICAGO (June 1, 2010) – With hospitals expected to meet in 2011 the first phase of deadlines for Meaningful Use specified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, HIMSS Analytics has added new questions to its annual Survey on Meaningful Use. The questions include those developed by the Health Story Project on the inclusion of structured document standards that must be in place so that narrative data converts to a structured format and can be imported in to the EMR. Read the full press release at Health Story Project.

Health Story Project Q3 Business Update Webcast

Please join us for an interactive Q3 Health Story Project Business Update webinar. The executive committee has a dynamic agenda planned to provide a progress update and plans related to development and promotion of data standards that support the Health Story vision in which all of the clinical information required for good patient care, administration, reporting and research is readily available electronically, including information from narrative documents, thus supporting a comprehensive electronic clinical record that tells a patient’s complete health story.

This webinar is being held Wednesday, September 30, 2009, from 9:00-10:00 AM Central. Register here. Please contact Joy Kuhl, MBA, CPF, if you are interested in an update yet unable to make the webinar.

AHDI-West Hosting Technology Webinars to Support Power of 10 Campaign

We’re ready! Are you?

“Power of 10” Technology Webinars

As most of you know, AHDI has launched a year-long campaign to raise a minimum of $100,000 ($10 from 10,000 MTs) by the end of 2010. This is an effort to support our association’s advocacy efforts in Washington, DC. AHDI has hired a lobbying firm, who is working to ensure our sector is well represented in the healthcare reform criteria, standards for EHR systems, and workforce development in allied health. There is definitely power in numbers.

On behalf of ALL AHDI components, AHDI-West will host a technology webinar once a month, beginning in September 2009 and extending through December 2010 (total of 16 sessions). Each webinar will be focused on various aspects of technology in our industry, featuring a variety of vendors who will provide an education overview. The webinars will be 1.5 hours in length, including 60 minutes of education/instruction and 30 minutes of Q&A, qualify for AHDI-approved CEC opportunities for registrants (either MT Tools or Technology & Workplace). The fee for each of the 16 webinars will be $10 (for all registrants). All sessions will be recorded (with the permission of the presenters) and available for download if members are not able to attend the live presentation. Each download will also cost $10 for All proceeds will be sent to AHDI earmarked for the AHDI Power of 10 campaign.

The first Power of 10 Technology webinar will be Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 2:00-3:30 PM PST.

Topic: The Health Story Project
Presenter: Laura Bryan, CMT, AHDI-F, AHDI 2009 Advocate of the Year & AHDI representative on the HSP since January 2007.
AHDI CEC Approval: 1.5 TW (Technology & Workplace) credits

We are capturing where attendees heard about the webinars and which components they belong to. Every month we will celebrate who has brought in the most attendees per webinar. Spread the word to EVERYONE who has ANYTHING to do with healthcare documentation. This is a great opportunity to follow up with your legislators or introduce yourself to more of them, and invite them to this webinar.
Go to www.AHDI-West.org to register for the webinars.

Spread the news!! Promote this to your members and “future” AHDI or MTIA members.

ACE 2009—Nashville, Tennessee

If you weren’t able to attend AHDI’s 31st Annual Convention and Exposition in Nashville last week, you missed out on a powerful event packed with relevant educational sessions, dynamic keynote speakers, and valuable networking events. This year the dialogue and exchange around EHR adoption, "meaningful use," the Health Story Project, the need to preserve physician narrative in the future of health data capture, and the importance of promoting the role of the knowledge worker in quality assurance—all provided attendees and exhibitors with a critical opportunity to stay in the stream of important information. Here is just a peek at some of the key messages and events you missed:

• Event: Launch of the Power of 10 Campaign
• Message: Medical Transcription is a proven accelerator for EHR adoption and is a "shovel ready" solution to healthcare providers having trouble purchasing expensive EHR systems
• Message: The Dictation/Transcription process is a preferred method for physicians documenting the healthcare encounter
• Message: Medical transcription is a "green" job and this technology-enabled knowledge workforce is capable of assisting with the migration to greater EHR adoption
• Event: Dr. Jonathan Perlin, Chair of the HIT Standards Committee, in a meeting with members of the AHDI and MTIA Board of Directors, declaring value in the AHDI and MTIA promoting uniformly structured and coded narrative reports to better describe the healthcare encounter (Health Story Project)
• Event: AHDI leaders sharing successful best practices in promoting credentialing, education approval, alliance building, career fairs, and membership development.
• Message: AHDI’s work with the Dewey Square Group (DSG), a lobbying firm based in Washington, DC, has improved AHDI’s access to key government decision-makers and made the organization’s advocacy efforts more impactful. Since beginning its work with DSG, AHDI has been able to secure a meeting with the Senior Advisor to the National Coordinator for Health IT. In addition, the important Health IT Policy Committee recently cited dictation-transcription as a specific function that could be included in EHR certification criteria.
• Message: CCHIT, the approval body for EHR systems, does not require narrative dictation as an option for data entry. Discussion around this reality lead to agreement around promoting The Health Story Project as well as other specific actions to take through our advocacy efforts.

Health Story Project and "Meaningful Use" Definitions

The Health Story Project is an alliance of healthcare vendors, providers and associations that share a vision that all of the clinical information required for good patient care, administration, reporting and research will be readily available electronically—providing patients with a comprehensive electronic clinical record, or complete health story.

The greatest single waste of current health information technology (HIT) resources is the failure to leverage information that is already electronic; this occurs approximately 600,000,000 times each year in the U.S. when dictated notes are printed and the electronic source is not available for exchange and reuse. With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) there is an opportunity to accelerate transformation of dictation from paper to electronic data and to address this significant gap.

Meaningful use of the Certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) must encompass dictation for creation and exchange of standards-based clinical documentation. This comprehensive view of the EHR supports the immediate needs of front-line physicians and patients, is complementary with structured data, and lays the ground work for increasing EHR adoption and information reuse.

Stakeholder Communities Addressed in this Testimony
• Physicians: the overwhelming majority use dictation
• Vendors: Medical Records and Document Management, Coding, Dictation, Speech Recognition, Natural Language Processing & EHR
• Transcription/Coding Service Providers: includes over 200,000 U.S.-based knowledge workers
• Patients: want and deserve access to their complete record, including physician narrative and structured data entry

2009 MTIA Conference Update

This year’s MTIA Annual Conference was one of the best and most successful conferences in MTIA’s 20-year history. From April 22nd to 25th, people from across the globe converged on Louisville, Kentucky, for four days of informative presentations, great networking, and fun social events. Below are some key issues and strategic priorities discussed during the conference:

• The recently enacted HITECH Act (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act) and healthcare reform present tremendous opportunities for the clinical documentation sector; however, the sector must be organized and focused, or else it risks squandering those opportunities.
• Attendees wholeheartedly supported a uniform visibility campaign comprised of advocacy to key health policymakers and a public relations strategy focused on the sector’s contribution to quality patient care delivery.
• The HITECH Act will deeply impact the sector, including significant new obligations with respect to HIPAA and data breach notifications.
• "Discrete reportable transcription" can be integrated with EHR technology as a method of increasing EHR adoption, since many physicians prefer the dictation process as a faster means of documenting healthcare encounters over more time consuming point and click, templated documentation approaches.
• Consumers becoming increasingly instrumental in documenting their personal health stories, combined with more outcomes driven data from the provider community, is creating dynamic new business models for the clinical documentation sector.
• The Health Story Project promotes and enhances the value of narrative text in the age of EHRs by producing and encouraging the adoption of standards for the flow of information between common types of healthcare documents and EHRs.
• The SRT Summit generated dialogue concerning the impact of SRT on the clinical documentation sector based on information provided by a sector-wide SRT survey being conducted by MTIA in partnership with AHDI and AHIMA, with the ultimate goal being the creation of a trends and best practices white paper to assist MTSOs with the challenges of purchasing, adopting, and implementing SRT.
• The QA Summit reviewed essential elements of a quality assessment process and outlined key components and metrics in order to begin producing a widely accepted quality standard protocol that will serve the healthcare community as prudent, efficient, cost-effective, valid, reliable, and scalable to ensure quality of all health records.

You still can benefit from some of the valuable information shared at the conference by purchasing a set of CDs containing audio recordings of the speakers’ presentations and, if applicable, their PowerPoint presentations. To purchase the entire collection of CDs for only $129, please visit the webpage of Lawrence Media Group, the company that produced the CDs: http://shop.lawrencemg.com/-c-21_8915.html.