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Howard Anderson

Howard Anderson
Howard Anderson is a writer specializing in healthcare IT topics. He was the founding editor of Health Data Management as well as HealthcareInfoSecurity.com.

Recent Posts

HL7 Da Vinci Project Use Case Progress Aids Market Readiness

[fa icon="calendar'] Dec 20, 2023 9:31:58 AM / by Howard Anderson posted in FHIR, Da Vinci, value based care, DEQM, prior authorization, alerts/notifications, notifications, coverage requirements discovery, documentation templates and payer rules, FHIR Accelerator, FHIR Connectathon, patient cost transparency, PDex, FHIR Implementation Guides, burden reduction, CDex, member attribution, VBPR, Value-Based Performance Reporting, CRD, PCT, HRex, prior authorization support

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2023 Accomplishments Position Industry for Year Ahead

Substantial progress has been made this year on HL7 Da Vinci Project Implementation Guides (IGs), which describe how to use HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (HL7 FHIR®) standard for exchanging data to support value-based healthcare and implementations of the guides.

Sizing Up Accomplishments

At the December Da Vinci Community Roundtable, Hans Buitendijk, Da Vinci Project Steering Committee Vice Chair, reviewed progress this year and offered an outlook for 2024.

We have a number of organizations across the spectrum that have adopted one or more of our [FHIR implementation] capabilities. … That's fantastic in the short number of years that this initiative started to look at what is necessary to make it happen,” Buitendijk said.

“We currently have about eight publishing updates that have been accomplished and quite a few ballot processes that are in flight and being planned for, and there is a good amount of commitment to making this happen. So, we really need to be proud of what we have achieved to date, and particularly in the last year.”

In the year ahead, alignment with emerging regulations, including the final CMS Interoperability Rule, will be a top priority, he pointed out.

Interoperability efforts must go beyond a general set of data to ensure adequate support for public health, research, quality measures and more, he added. “We are all going to impact the ability and the opportunity to share more data over time,” he said.

The key to advancing interoperability by leveraging FHIR, he stressed, is to involve many different parties and develop the same language where we have a minimum set of capabilities that everybody can support, and leaving room … to grow, to explore, to define new things.”

He also pointed out: “We must continuously raise the bar for what we can exchange and determine what is relevant across many different stakeholders that we should all do in the same way … because the data that we have covered so far is still only a part of the variety of data exchanges that are relevant and can benefit from improvements."

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Connectathons Help HL7 FHIR Users Move From the Theoretical to the Concrete

[fa icon="calendar'] Dec 18, 2023 1:00:29 PM / by Howard Anderson posted in FHIR, Da Vinci, value based care, FHIR Accelerator, FHIR Connectathon, FHIR Implementation Guides, VBPR, Value-Based Performance Reporting

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Register Now for January Virtual FHIR Connectathon and Gain Perspective from a New Participant: the Value-Based Performance Reporting Use Case Co-Lead

Those interested in gaining a better understanding of how the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR®) standard works – and helping to develop specification refinements – should consider attending the upcoming connectathon, which will be held online January 16-18, 2024.

“Connectathons can be an effective way for organizations to initiate or advance their FHIR capabilities,’ Viet Nguyen, MD, HL7 Da Vinci Project Technical Director and HL7 Chief Implementation Officer, says.

Nguyen notes that the numerous tracks within the connectathon event allows organizations to pick and choose which tracks they want to emphasize based on their regulatory or strategic needs.

First-time HL7 FHIR Connectathon participant Teresa Younkin, HL7 Value-Based Performance Reporting (VBPR) Project Co-Lead and Senior Consultant at Point-of-Care Partners, attended the September 2023 event. She says, “The value of the connectathons is to actually get to see the systems work and move from the theoretical to the concrete.”

According to Younkin, connectathons are an opportunity to bridge the gap between the technical and the business. It goes beyond just exchanging bits and bytes; instead, you can see in real time how the data could be ingested and utilized in an organization. Many reference implementations have simple interfaces to make computer code human readable. Having the ability to physically see how this data exchange impacts workflows opens cross functional dialogs, addressing communication gaps that traditionally exist between technical teams and business teams.

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Insights on Achieving Bidirectional Clinical Data Exchange

[fa icon="calendar'] May 17, 2023 5:21:16 PM / by Howard Anderson posted in FHIR, interoperability, Da Vinci, FHIR Accelerator, PDex, CDex

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May Community Roundtable Will Feature Case Study on How Standardized Information Sharing Between Providers, Payers Improves Patient Care

In this month’s Community Roundtable, the HL7 Da Vinci Project will offer timely insights on achieving bidirectional clinical data exchange between payers and providers using Da Vinci’s PDex (Patient Data Exchange) and CDex (Clinical Data Exchange) implementation guides.

The virtual roundtable, titled “Improving Patient Outcomes Using FHIR: How providers are exchanging clinical data with payers to deliver better quality of care,” will be held 4-5:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, May 24.

 

This free online event will feature an implementation story from Florida Blue, healow Insights and Humana that describes how standardized information sharing improves patient care. The session will include a demonstration of clinical data exchange capabilities, such as point of care alerts and up-to-date patient histories, underscoring the value of using HL7 FHIR® (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standards to optimize electronic medical record integration to assist in achieving value-based care outcomes.

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How to Improve Patient Matching: A Case Study

[fa icon="calendar'] Mar 15, 2023 3:47:03 PM / by Howard Anderson posted in FHIR, interoperability, Da Vinci, FHIR Accelerator, patient cost transparency, CDex, member attribution

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Hear about real-world lessons learned on applying the member attribution use case to improve patient matching

In this month’s Community Roundtable, the HL7 Da Vinci Project will offer important use case updates plus a real-world case study on improving patient matching. The virtual roundtable, titled “Use Case Progress and Patient Matching Success: How to Improve Interoperability and Patient Safety,” will be held 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, March 22.

This informative session will highlight use case milestones for Clinical Data Exchange (CDex), Price Cost Transparency (PCT) and Member Attribution (ATR). Plus, it will offer a case study from Opala and MultiCare Connected Care, implementers of Da Vinci’s member attribution use case. This groundbreaking project resulted in a 10% improvement in patient matching. This benefit helped MultiCare further improve patient safety by ensuring clinicians have the full picture about their patients in real time.

Guest speakers will include:

  • Crystal Kallem, project manager, HL7 Da Vinci Project, and senior consultant, Point-of-Care Partners
  • Jocelyn Keegan, program manager, HL7 Da Vinci Project, and payer practice lead, Point-of-Care Partners
  • Meghan Quint, vice president of solutions and customer success, Opala
  • Anna Taylor, AVP, population health and value-based care, MultiCare Connected Care

The moderator will be Alix Goss, HL7 Da Vinci Project PMO, who is vice president and senior consultant at Imprado.

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Next Community Roundtable to Feature Updates on HL7 Da Vinci Implementation Guides

[fa icon="calendar'] Oct 19, 2022 3:57:24 PM / by Howard Anderson posted in FHIR, interoperability, Da Vinci, value based care, FHIR Accelerator

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The Da Vinci Project’s September Community Roundtable to be held October 26 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET

The next Da Vinci Community Roundtable, to be held Oct. 26, will offer timely updates on changes recently made in the Da Vinci Implementation Guides and offer an outlook for next year.

 

The event, “Current State: HL7 Da Vinci Implementation Guide Progress in 2022,” will be held online from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. ET.

 

The Da Vinci Project is a private-sector initiative that accelerates the adoption of HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (HL7® FHIR®) as the standard to support and integrate value-based care (VBC) data exchange across communities. The goal of the project is to help payers and providers positively impact clinical, quality, cost and care management outcomes, enabling providers to see the right data at the right time for patient-centered care.

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