STREAMLINED EHR FUNCTIONAL MODEL MOVES CLOSER TO BALLOT VOTING

CHICAGO, February 6—The EHR Collaborative, a group of organizations representing key stakeholders in healthcare, announced today that a much-improved version of HL7’s electronic health record (EHR) functional model should be ready for vote by mid-March.

The current draft holds approximately 200 functions, compared to the 1,600 functions included in the initial draft voted down in the fall of 2003. “The comments and suggestions gathered at the open meetings and conference calls have provided the special interest group (SIG) of HL7 with suitable input to further refine the functional outline—making it even more streamlined and easier to understand,” stated Clair Callan, MD, American Medical Association’s (AMA) interim vice president of professional standards. “It achieves simplicity, yet retains comprehensiveness.”

The latest version of the second draft ballot will be released in early February so that the EHR Collaborative can collect final industry feedback before the formal HL7 voting process begins. A series of open meetings will be held at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, FL, February 23 – 26. Those unable to attend can provide comment via the EHR Collaborative Web site at www.ehrcollaborative.org. The model is tentatively set for HL7 ballot voting on March 15.

If the second draft standard is passed, it will then be adopted for trial use. This would allow the government, vendors, and providers to collaborate on any product, implementation, and reimbursement issues over a two-year review period before the proposal of a fully accredited HL7 standard of the EHR model.

“The industry shouldn’t expect any vendor to be fully compliant with the draft model if and when the draft standard is approved,” said Don Mon, PhD, vice president of practice leadership for the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). “The model combines existing EHR functions along with future-focused functions. Therefore few, if any, products will currently contain 100 percent of the functions in the model.”

“The two-year period will allow vendors to understand the draft model and standard better. This will help them set a direction for enhancing their products, and to begin migration to the draft standard,” said Pat Wise, director of EHR initiatives at HIMSS. Wise added “while the EHR standard can assist providers in constructing their request for proposals (RFP) during an EHR selection process, there is a difference between listing an EHR function as a business requirement in an RFP and stating it’s mandatory because of the standard.”

The EHR Collaborative is a joint collaboration involving AHIMA, AMA, American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), eHealthInitiative (eHI), HIMSS, and the National Alliance for Health Information Technology (NAHIT). The goal of the EHR Collaborative is to facilitate rapid input from the healthcare community in this and other development initiatives that advance the adoption of information standards for healthcare.