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Chair of the BOG Report: Update from the ACC Informatics Committee on Health Information Technology
Dear Fellow Governors,
The ACC Informatics Committee is responsible for coordinating the health informatics activities and policies of the College. The Committee supports health information technology deployment to promote quality in cardiovascular health, through the following:
• Infrastructure, interoperability and lexicon (variables of care and standards)
• Electronic Health Record (EHR) Adoption, education, and advocacy
• Tools (data registries, decision support, quality improvement, reporting)
Dr. Michael Mirro and Dr. James Tcheng gave an update at the March 2009 BOG meeting about the America Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) on Health Information Technology (HIT) adoption. Further details on ARRA can be found at:
http://www.acc.org/practicemgt/healthcaretechnology/ehr_federalmain.cfm
In order for physicians to participate in the financial incentives with regards to HIT they will need to demonstrate “meaningful use” of their HIT system. Recently the newly formed HIT Policy Committee has drafted criteria for meaningful use:
The Health IT Policy Committee makes recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (HIT) on a policy framework for the development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure, including standards for the exchange of patient medical information. The ACC Informatics Committee has worked with advocacy in providing detailed comment on the “meaningful use” document. This is extremely important for the practicing cardiologist since the implementation of this policy will define how an individual practice can take advantage of the financial incentives. Concerns regarding this policy include potential significant administrative expenses on practices and as well as unrealistic timelines creating barriers for HIT use. We urge you to look and follow this policy carefully.
The Informatics Committee has developed a principles document that can be used as a tool to support the selection and deployment of a cardiovascular EHR in clinical practice. The tool is not meant to be a comprehensive or exhaustive list of requirements but rather a list of core elements that would be necessary for a fully functional cardiovascular electronic health record. The document is available on the ACC website:
http://www.acc.org/practicemgt/healthcaretechnology/ehr_toolkitmain.cfm
The development of CardioSmart ( http://www.cardiosmart.org/ ) has been the first significant patient directed activity for the ACC. The ultimate goal would be to provide a patient portal on this site so that patients can electronically store their health information and also provide a repository for their individual information. The ACC supports this effort and is under the direction of Dr. Fred Bove is developing a specific strategy regarding Personal Health Record (PHR) use and exchange of information between PHR’s and physicians office-based electronic health records.
ACC has launched an e-Prescribing Initiative to promote and facilitate adoption of e-Prescribing among its members. The following vendors are participating in ACC’s e-Prescribing initiative and have attested that their products meet ACC’s minimum functional criteria:
The ACC has joined the Get Connected campaign, where physicians and their staffs can generate a free, personalized E-Prescribing Readiness report that identifies whether or not their EMR is certified to connect to pharmacies electronically. If their system is certified, the report provides details on how they can request an electronic connection to pharmacies through their vendor. The site also provides guidance on how to evaluate and acquire technology that supports e-prescribing. The eHealth Initiative (eHI), in collaboration with others, released a “how-to” guide to help clinicians make informed decisions about how and when to transition from paper to electronic prescribing systems.
- Read a detailed overview of e-Prescribing. – provided by the California HealthCare Foundation
- Read a detailed guide to best practices on the use of e-Prescribing in your practice. – provided by SureScripts
The first version of a standardized cardiovascular Lexicon (vocabulary) will be published in the next six months. The current document has been circulated through various ACC committees. The goal of this document will be to standardize vocabulary across the vendor community and to establish cardiovascular vocabulary standards for certification activities. This will ensure that cardiologists selecting health IT solutions will have standardization within various domains. This is an important activity with regards to the development of decision support software to assist in quality reporting:
http://www.acc.org/practicemgt/healthcaretechnology/index.htm
The ACC is the primary sponsor of the Cardiology Domain of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), website found at: www.ihe.net . Currently, the ACC is seeking support from subspecialty societies such as HRS, ASE, and SCANI. This activity is of critical importance in pushing forward standards for interoperability between devices and HIT domains: http://www.acc.org/practicemgt/healthcaretechnology/hit_acchitstandards.cfm
Currently the committee has developed a 5 year plan to develop clinical decision support (CDS) software to assist in the quality reporting and to support our members utilizing HIT solutions to ensure a high level of quality performance. The deployment of CDS tools is critical to consistent cardiovascular guideline compliance across various care environments. Jason Kreuter (ACC Informatics Committee staff), with the assistance of Drs. John Windle and James Tcheng, has started a pilot project to translate recommendations and performance measures into CDS software. The first chronic disease entity developed was coronary artery disease. Chronic Heart Failure measures are now being translated into CDS pathways, with Atrial Fibrillation to follow. This will provide an opportunity for vendors to accelerate their work in the cardiovascular domain. This work also will support the IC3 (Improving Continuous Cardiac Care) activity by proactively responding to clinical performance measures in the EHR:
https://www.improvingcardiaccare.org/Pages/default.aspx
Three 90 minute high-level health information technology spotlight sessions will take place at the ACC 2010 Conference on Sunday, March 14, 2010 in Atlanta. The first session will be a health policy session with a keynote speaker, tentatively set for Dr. David Blumenthal (Office of the National Coordinator) to provide an educational session for members on where the federal government currently stands with regards to HIT deployment and standardization. Other sessions will include practical sessions on implementation of electronic health records and case studies of success as well as failure. Lastly, the future of HIT and health information exchange and quality reporting will be discussed in a separate session. ACC will be collaborating with Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) to plan the event. This shall increase visibility of the sessions to members and vendors.
If you need help or have questions on healthcare technology for your clinical practice, please contact ACC HIT staff at ht@acc.org.
ACC Informatics Committee Members
Committee Chair: Michael J. Mirro, MD, FACC michaelmirro@gmail.com
Committee Vice Chair: James E. Tcheng, MD, FACC tchen001@mc.duke.edu
Alfred A. Bove, MD, PhD, FACC bovea@tuhs.temple.edu
Kenneth P. Brin, MD, PhD FACC kbrin@brin.org
Ralph G. Brindis, MD, MPH, FACC ralph.brindis@kp.org
Paul Casale, MD, FACC pncasale@lancastergeneral.org
James T. Dove, MD, MACC JDove@prairieheart.com
Lee Goldberg, MD, FACC lee.goldberg@uphs.upenn.edu
John G. Harold, MD, FACC john.harold@cshs.org
Paul A. Heidenreich, MD, FACC paul.heidenreich@va.gov
Ronald P. Karlsberg, MD, FACC Karlsberg@cvmg.com
Alan S. Katz, MD, FACC alan.katz@chsli.org
Andrew M. Keller, MD, FACC andy@cardioscan.us
Ganpat Thakker, MD, FACC gthakker1@gmail.com
Gerald Serwer, MD, FACC gserwer@umich.edu
James S. Walder, MD, FACC jwalder@enetis.net
William S. Weintraub, MD, FACC wweintraub@christianacare.org
R. Jeffrey Westcott, MD, FACC jwestcottmd@gmail.com
John R. Windle, MD, FACC jrwindle@unmc.edu
ACC Informatics Committee Staff Support:
Dan Roman
Specialist, Health Information Technology
202-375-6671
droman@acc.org
Sunday, September 13, 2009 7:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Heart House Multi-Purpose Room Washington, D.C.
BOG Meeting at Legislative Conference
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BOG Steering Committee Highlights |
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The BOG Steering Committee will convene Tuesday, August 11, 2009.
If you have issues for the Steering Committee to address at this meeting, please contact Jayne Jordan
(jjordan@acc.org) at 202.375.6609, or any of your BOG leadership. | |