Technical outcome – The health IT is able to create syndrome-based public health surveillance information for electronic transmission to public health agencies according to the HL7 2.5.1 standard, the Public Health Information Network (PHIN) Messaging Guide for Syndromic Surveillance Release 2.0, and the August 2015 Erratum to the PHIN Messaging Guide.
Clarifications:
- For the public health certification criteria in § 170.315(f), health IT will only need to be certified to those criteria that are required to meet the measures the provider intends to report on to meet Objective 8: Public Health and Clinical Data Registry Reporting.
- Health IT is not required to comply with the implementation guide’s requirement that a sender’s system (Health IT Module) support the ICD-9-CM value set.
- Health IT must be tested and certified to only one of the value sets for the implementation guide’s “submitted messages” requirement. More specifically, this means that a Health IT Module can use either the ICD-10-CM or SNOMED CT® value sets in the submitted messages for all of the test steps in the Syndromic Surveillance Test Suite. The tool provides test data that includes codes for both value sets. Where the tool does not have test data that supports the Health IT Module’s value set (either ICD-10-CM or SNOMED CT®), the developer of the Health IT Module must provide the codes and testers must perform a visual inspection of the messages for these test steps to ensure that equivalent and valid ICD-10-CM or SNOMED CT® are used to populate the messages.
- It is appropriate to distinguish between ambulatory settings and emergency department, urgent care and inpatient settings. This criterion requires the use of the HL7® 2.5.1 standard, PHIN Messaging Guide Release 2.0, and August 2015 Erratum to the PHIN Messaging Guide for the inpatient setting (which includes emergency departments).
- There is no certification requirement for the ambulatory setting. ONC notes that the PHIN Messaging Guide Release 2.0 and Erratum does support the urgent care ambulatory setting and would be appropriate to use to that particular setting. [see also 80 FR 62665]
- The 2024 SVAP version includes test cases for both an urgent care ambulatory setting as well as for routine ambulatory care.
- The CDC published an erratum to the PHIN Messaging Guide Release 2.0 (August 2015). The Erratum consolidates Release 2.0 information and clarifies existing conformance requirements of the implementation guide. ONC refers developers to the addendum for specific information about the clarifications it includes. [see also 80 FR 62665]
- NIST has published, in collaboration with CDC, Errata and Clarification Guidelines to clarify conformance requirements of the 2024 SVAP implementation guide.
- The 2024 SVAP implementation guide includes business rules for timeliness as well as for timestamp and identifier consistency. Visual inspection test cases have been included in the SVAP test tool to verify conformance to these business rules.
- There is no transport standard required for this criterion. Developers have the flexibility to determine the transport standard(s) to implement. [see also 77 FR 54243]
