The Standard

Background

The Biden-Harris Administration will host the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health on September 28, 2022. In addition to announcing a national strategy to address the intersections between food, hunger, nutrition and health, the Administration has issued a call for stakeholder commitments along five pillars, including the “integration of nutrition and health.”

We seek to better integrate nutrition information within a patient’s electronic health record (EHR) by accelerating a standards-based approach to implementing universal social needs screening. With the final CMS IPPS rule requiring hospitals to report on  social determinants of health (SDOH) screening quality measures in 2024, along with similar requirements of MA SNPs and ACO REACH model participants in 2023, we believe a multi-stakeholder effort, which should also include Medicaid agencies and managed care plans, to advance an HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resources (“FHIR”)-based approach to meet these “functional” requirements will significantly enhance the ability of providers to meet these CMS requirements.

The Da Vinci Project’s September Community Roundtable to be held September 28 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET

As fee for service shifts to value-based care, value-based contracts have emerged as a mechanism that providers and payers may use to better align their contracting structures with broader changes in the healthcare system.

"Dive Into Performance Reporting for Value-Based Contracts,” this month’s Da Vinci Community Roundtable presentation by representatives from Humana, Providence and the Da Vinci PMO, provides you with front-row access to HL7 Da Vinci Project’s newest use case that aims to develop an HL7 FHIR Implementation Guide to support value-based performance reporting for quality and risk contracts.

Learn about HL7's Fonteva Implementation 

Dear HL7 Members and Community:

We are pleased to share that next month we will begin the transition to a new Association Management System (AMS), Fonteva, enabling us to better serve the HL7 community. 

Fonteva Quick Facts

• Replaces the current AMS (GoMembers)
• Built on Salesforce, offering a more versatile platform
• Will not replace the current HL7.org website
  • Some sections related to membership and registrations will have a  new look and feel

HL7^® International, the global authority on interoperability of health information technology with members in 55 countries, today announced the appointment of two new members to the HL7 board of directors to serve a two-year term: Aashima Gupta, director, global healthcare solutions, Google Cloud; Judy Wawira Gichoya, M.D., M.S., assistant professor, radiology and imaging sciences, Emory University School of Medicine.

“These leaders represent a critical cross section of global stakeholders who are committed to advancing health through information technology. We are delighted to welcome them to the HL7 board of directors,” said Charles Jaffe, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of HL7. “Their strategic expertise and diverse experience will contribute greatly to HL7’s goal of improving the quality of care and reducing costs by overcoming the barriers to interoperability.”

The HL7 Da Vinci Project recently named eight healthcare technology experts as its 2021 Da Vinci Community Champions. The individuals recognized for this prestigious honor represent the diverse membership of the HL7^® Da Vinci Project, a collaborative multi-stakeholder effort including health plans, hospital systems, accountable care organizations (ACOs) and technology vendors. The awards were announced on July 20, 2022, at the monthly HL7 Da Vinci Project member meeting. This is the second year in which the HL7^® Da Vinci Project has recognized innovative leaders in health IT who are helping to guide the evolution of the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR^®) standard.

As a designated HL7 FHIR accelerator program, the Da Vinci Project is a private sector consortium dedicated to improving the healthcare delivery system by accelerating interoperability standards to support value-based care, reduce administrative burden, automate workflow and improve provider teams’ ability to impact health outcomes.

Last year, the Da Vinci Project leadership created the Community Champions Program to recognize and celebrate the talented problem solvers advancing interoperability within the industry. The Community Champion Program puts a spotlight on individuals who display the unique traits of “industry above self, a passion for making the healthcare system work better, supporting others, and promoting change.”

The HL7 Da Vinci Project’s August Community Roundtable to be held August 24  from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET

Da Vinci’s Community Roundtable returns after a summer hiatus with a powerful program highlighting a real-world implementation of Da Vinci’s Prior Authorization Implementation Guides.

“Celebrating HL7 FHIR's Success: From Champions to Prior Authorization Implementers,” will begin with a program update and brief recognition of the 2021 HL7 Da Vinci Community Champions, showcasing individuals making significant contributions to advancing value-based care by leveraging HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) and making the outputs of Da Vinci real.

After the updates, representatives of the 646-bed health system UC Davis Health, the 25.4-million-member payer Centene, and technology solutions vendor InterSystems will discuss their Da Vinci prior authorization journey and the benefits achieved to date.

Presenters for next week’s session include:

• Howard Cohen, Director, Advanced Technology Team, Centene
• Michael B. Marchant, Director, Health Information Exchange, UC Davis Health
• Lynda Rowe, Senior Advisor, Value-based Markets, InterSystems
• Mahesh Siddanati, Vice President, Digital Solutions and Product (Regulatory and Quality), Centene

Attendees will hear first-hand accounts of the considerations, challenges and benefits of working together to establish infrastructure to streamline prior authorization workflows, remove latency and enable real-time data sharing.

HL7 FHIR empowers patients to access health data with third-party apps in a growing number of countries. As nations, locales and regulators across the world look to increase their citizens’ access to health data through third-party apps, they naturally turn to FHIR. The International Patient Access (IPA) standard aims to enable regulators, empower patients, guide app developers, and promises greater consistency across countries for multinational apps and FHIR servers.

• For patients, greater access to health data empowers them to standardly and computably access and retain their digital health data.

• For regulators and national specification authors, the IPA specification provides a starting point to jumpstart a national health API ecosystem, with an emphasis on patient access. The IPA FHIR profiles are the result of an analysis of existing national base profiles, and is the lowest common denominator globally.

• For app developers, IPA outlines the global base set of access and security mechanisms and content format. This increases the size of the addressable market for apps, both in terms of geography and of systems.

• For systems vendors, IPA defines a base set of functionality, enabling less adaptation and custom work when the system is deployed to a new market. More apps and other systems are readily interoperable with the system.
  
• For healthcare systems, adoption of IPA means less expensive and more robust systems, as fewer market-specific customizations are required. Support of IPA will also enable healthcare systems access to a wide ecosystem of interoperable apps.