The Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) standard (version 1.1, C-CDA 1.1) was first adopted in 2012 as part of the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC’s) 2014 Edition final rule. It took nearly three years after that rulemaking for certified health information technology (health IT) with C-CDA 1.1 capabilities to be widely deployed among health care providers. Today’s experience with respect to C-CDA-based interoperability reflects this now five year-old version, and, in some respects,

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On May 9, 2016, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced the Move Health Data Forward Challenge to promote innovation in the area of consumer-mediated exchange. We challenged the health information technology industry to help find new technological ways to put consumers in the driver’s seat when it comes to how and when their health information can be shared.

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Usability of health information technology (health IT) systems means many things to many people.  If we look at the industry-standard International Organization for Standardization definition, usability is, “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” While we agree on a definition, we also come to a fork in the road in terms of implementation,

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Care coordination is a key feature of evolving care models designed to avoid episodic care for patients. Currently, various federal programs that pay for health care services require a care plan as a component of care coordination. For example, care plans must be established for patients receiving certain Medicare benefits (e.g., home health care) and Medicare makes payment for certain primary care and care management services with a care plan element (e.g., chronic care management services).

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Last week at Health Datapalooza 2017, Adam Culbertson (HIMSS Innovator in Residence at ONC) and I gave a five minute “coming attraction” presentation about a patient matching algorithm challenge ONC will launch in June. For the uninitiated, we use “patient matching” in health IT as shorthand to describe the techniques used to match the data about you held by one health care provider with the data about you held by another (or many others).

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