News
A broad-based initiative, led by the National Quality Forum (NQF), announced the availability of a Health Level Seven (HL7) ballot that will advance automated performance measurement and reporting.
"A new set of standards looks to bring usability to imaging management reports, by letting clinicians mine the data they hold," writes Mark Hagland in the March, 2008, issue of Healthcare Informatics. The article reports on the development of specifications for dictated imaging reports, a product of long-standing collaboration between HL7 and DICOM and supported by Alschuler Associates as part of our work on CDA for Common Document Types.
"Implementation guides for documents containing 'history and physical reports' were submitted Monday to Ann Arbor, Mich.-based HL7. It is the first ballot in what is expected to be a series of interoperability specifications under a project called Clinical Document Architecture for Common Document Types, or CDA4CDT."
Standards development expert Liora Alschuler, the CDA4CDT project leader, said balloting is the least of the worries ahead.
"The first challenge is to get this adopted," Alschuler said. "We have high hopes that this will see relatively rapid, widespread adoption because it has a really minimal impact on workflow. ...
"So what does that do for humanity? If we look at building interoperability and patient-centered records, this is the largest single gain in interoperability that the industry could see," Alschuler said.
"Dictated medical notes and other types of transcribed patient records are usually available in electronic form, but have traditionally not been very useful in the context of an electronic medical record (EMR) system. Transcribed records follow a variety of formats depending on the clinical setting and type of transcription service used, making them difficult to search.
"There's no real structure to the narrative that's being inserted into the EMR," says Jay Cannon, president of the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA), Chicago. "The information is visibly accessible, but within the system it's just a text blob."
...Now, a new standard, based on the Health Level Seven (HL7) Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), could help improve the utilization of these types of documents.
Project launched to develop CDA implementation guides for the most common types of dictated notes, creating a bridge between transcription and the electronic medical record.
Several projects highlight growing momentum in adoption of the Clinical Document Architecture.
The Continuity of Care Document (CCD) implements the ASTM CCR on an HL7 CDA framework, providing industry with a single specification for all clinical document types.
Health Level Seven Highlights Successes of 2005, Important 2006 Initiatives at HIMSS.
HIMSS Electronic Health Record Vendors Association (EHRVA) Announces the Availability of CDA/CRS Quick Start Guide to Support Vendors? Interoperability Work
