September 16, 2008 | The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) has named eight new commissioners and re-appointed five existing commissioners to serve two-year terms on its 21-member board beginning in October. The Board of Trustees received and reviewed a total of 85 applications in making their appointments. The new commissioners are:

• Steve Arnold, president and CMO, CareData; CEO, Healthcare Global Advisors
• Richard Benoit, Senior Program Manager, Intel; Director of Ecosystem Development, Dossia
• Sarah Corley, CMO, NextGen Healthcare Information Systems
• John Derr, Senior VP and CIO, Golden Living
• Michael Kappel, Senior VP, Government and Industry Relations, McKesson Technology Solutions
• Joy Keeler, Principal, Health Information Technology, The MITRE Corporation
• Jennifer Laughlin, VP and CIO, UW Health Partners-Watertown Regional Medical Center
• David Merritt, Project Director, Center for Health Transformation, The Gingrich Group

The commissioners re-appointed to a second two-year term are:

• Christopher MacManus, Healthcare Information Technology Practice Leader, Tatum, LLC
• James Morrow, VP and CIO, North Fulton Family Medicine
• Don Rucker, VP and CMO, Siemens Medical Solutions
• Michael Ubl, Director, IT Strategy and eHealth, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota
• Andrew Wiesenthal, Associate Executive Director, Clinical Information Support, The Permanente Federation

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, along with industry partners, is hosting a National E-Prescribing Conference in Boston, Mass., October 6-7 to educate health care providers and professionals, pharmacists and beneficiary constituencies on the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA) ePrescribing program and help promote the adoption of ePrescribing throughout the health care community.

SureScripts has released the free National Progress Report on E-Prescribing, an at-a-glance summary of key statistics detailing the status of ePrescribing adoption and utilization in the U.S. Beginning with statistics from 2004, the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange’s first year of operation, the report tracks actual electronic prescription activity through 2007 and includes projections for 2008. The report includes a detailed analysis of the individual variables that influence ePrescribing and concludes with a series of recommendations on how to accelerate ePescribing adoption and utilization.

eHealth Initiative released their Fifth Annual Survey of Health Information Exchange at the State and Local Levels, which included responses from 130 community-based initiatives in 48 states that shows the significant impact fully operational initiatives are having on improving health care delivery and efficiency. The survey results indicate continued progress: the number of operational health information exchange initiatives has increased considerably; the 2008 survey counts 18 new HIEs; and state and local health information exchange efforts continue to view the engagement of multiple stakeholders as a priority. The most significant challenge for all efforts continues to be the development of a sustainable business model.

CCHIT will launch the certification program for health information exchanges (HIEs) on Oct. 1. Following 14 months of development and a successful pilot that included the Delaware Health Information Network, HealthBridge, Inland Health and Vermont Information Technology Leaders, the Commission will begin accepting applications on that date for the first phase of inspection for 09 HIE certification. Information about this new HIE program, including the criteria and test scripts, the HIE Certification Handbook and the applicant agreement, will be available on September 29 at www.cchit.org/hie. Applications will also reopen for 08 certification of ambulatory electronic health records (EHRs) on Oct. 1 and will be accepted on a continuous basis through March 31, 2009

CCHIT will open a 30-day public comment period on the first draft of CCHIT Certified 09 criteria for ambulatory, child health, cardiovascular medicine, behavioral health, inpatient and emergency department EHRs, and personal health records (PHRs) from Sept. 29-Oct. 28. The draft criteria will be published at http://cchit.org/participate/public-comment/.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have published new guidelines for the management of health information security: ISO 27799:2008, Health informatics—Information security management in health using ISO/IEC 27002. ISO 27799 contains a practical action plan for implementing ISO/IEC 27002 in a health environment. Taken together, these two standards define what is required in terms of information security in health care. Three informative annexes are included in the new standard, covering respectively, the general threats to health information; tasks and related documents of the information security management system; and the advantages of support tools as an aid to implementation. The guidelines can be purchased from the ISO store.

CliniComp has announced an agreement to provide the Essentris Perinatal Solution to Tenet Healthcare Corporation, one of the country's major health systems. Dallas-based Tenet initially will deploy CliniComp's Essentris Perinatal in the labor and delivery (L&D) units of seven of its facilities in 12 states, with additional installations planned for 2009 and 2010. Subsequently, additional Tenet facilities will replace current documentation processes in their L&D units with Essentris Perinatal.

El Camino Hospital has selected Microsoft Amalga as its data platform to aggregate all of its information, which currently resides in disparate, transaction-based systems, and integrate it into a single system that will allow the hospital to better evaluate and improve quality of care. The investment is part of an aggressive three-year initiative aimed at helping the Mountain View, Calif.-based, nonprofit community hospital achieve a top 5 percent ranking among U.S. hospitals across all of its service lines.

The American College of Cardiology has certified LUMEDX as an ACC-NCDR CARE Registry software vendor. LUMEDX's Export to CARE Registry solution is the latest in a suite of software applications developed to address the growing need for impeccable, accessible vascular data, streamlined clinical workflows, and superior data management. LUMEDX's Export to CARE Registry software enables simple, straightforward data capture and submission by helping hospitals automate the processes. LUMEDX software enables hospitals to: capture data at the point of care, submit automatically to the ACC, track additional data elements, run reports internally, and review program performance.