Home

Cover Story

Table of Contents

E-Newsletter

Article Archive

Editorial Calendar

Datebook

Writers' Guidelines

Orgs/Links

Opinion Polls

Reprints

Search

Jan. 7 - AHIMA to Tackle Standards for Nursing Home IT

The American Health Information Management Association's Foundation of Research and Education, known as FORE, has launched a new project focused on electronic health records and other information technology for use in nursing homes.

The work from this project will enable post-acute and long-term care vendors and providers to develop and implement electronic health records and healthcare information technology products that will be functional in the emerging interoperable nationwide health information network.

Also, the project will provide policymakers with additional information to support implementation of healthcare IT standards for patient assessments required by the federal government.

FORE will use the Consolidated Health Informatics standards accepted by the Department of Health and Human Services for assessment instruments used in long-term care.

Specifically, the project will apply approved CHI standards to the nursing home Minimum Data Set (MDS) and home health Outcome Assessment Information Set (OASIS), validate the accuracy and impact of the application of these CHI standards, and develop guidance for using them for the exchange of standardized assessment and patient summary data.

FORE has assembled a team skilled in data and exchange standards to accomplish the work, said Linda Kloss, CEO of AHIMA.

Chief among FORE's goals are:

• Create a sample Health Level Seven (HL7) clinical document architecture (CDA) for the exchange of MDS data and assess the potential and requirements for a general CDA MDS solution

• Create a sample HL7 continuity of care document that incorporates data from the federally required assessment and other patient summary information for use in transfer of care between acute and long-term care facilities

• Apply logical observation identifiers, names and codes representations and semantic matching codes (including the use of SNOMED-CT) to MDS and OASIS, and validate the accuracy of the encoding using subject matter experts

• Investigate the intellectual property implications for disseminating standardized MDS, OASIS and IRF-PAI assessments, and develop recommendations for disseminating the healthcare IT encoded instruments

• Validate the accuracy of the healthcare IT standards applied to the nursing facility assessment instrument through the use of hypothetical MDS data and analyze the payment impact.

Kloss said the project would create a repeatable framework for making future assessment requirements interoperable.

The implementation guidance developed for the exchange of standardized assessments and patient summaries will guide vendors, providers, and policymakers on how to apply standards to assessments and patient summary information, and use standards to support the exchange of the information, she said.

Source: AHIMA

(View the Daily News Archive)