CCHIT Town Call: PHR certification
On Friday, October 10 at 4 PM Eastern / 1 PM Pacific, the Certification Commission will host a Town Call to introduce you to its new personal health record (PHR) certification, currently under development.
Participant Dial-In Number: 1 (877) 313-5342
Conference ID Number: 65204557
Download the presentation or Ask a question
Questions?
Feel free to post your questions now—or during the call—by commenting on this page. Answers will be posted online following the teleconference.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Jim Tate asks:
What is the fee structure for PHR Certification?
Once certified, how long will the PHR have active certification status?
Will the testing process be similar to the current Ambulatory process? (Self-attestation followed by live script demo viewed by jurors)
Jim Kretz asks:
For a topic of such importance to the future of healthcare, why is the conference call scheduled for late on a Friday afternoon preceeding a three day weekend?
The 2000 US Census identified nearly 20 % of the US population with disabilities. Most Web-based applications are not technically accessible to persons with disabilities using assistive technology not even factoring in sound usability design. It is likely that existing proprietary PHR products are not accessible for use by persons with disabilities.
Assuming that CCHIT is committed to making sure that PHR products “work properly and safely” for all users, what accessible electronic and information technology (AeIT) criteria (such as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act) will be used to address these deficits? How will you activity involve persons with disabilities as stakeholders in PHR usability and accessibility product testing?
Mark and Jodi,
The CCHIT criteria pertained mostly to privacy, security, interoperability and authentication. There was very little on the functions of the PHR itself. Was that deliberate based on the nascent nature of the PHR industry? Will there be a separate effort to specify criteria for the features and functions required of a PHR?
I’d like to hear how you explain the difference between:
1. a PHR and
2. the personal health information that is available on a healthcare provider’s patient portal?
How do you explain why we need our records in both places?
Seems the CCHIT concept of PHR is only an online web-based system. Is there no place for disconnected PHR? Is there no place for a PHR on a USB memory stick?
The CCHIT Criteria seem to be a mixture of functional requirements similar to the Ambulatory requirements, yet also others are like a service similar to the Network requirements. Is CCHIT looking to a PHR as a service model? Is CCHIT then going to get into reviewing policies of the PHR?
Mark and Jodi,
In a prior powerpoint, it was noted that a user would be given the ability to remove their data (or disable their account) if certification was lost, but this isn’t specifically called out in the criteria. Is it assumed that the ability to expunge data (criteria 19.05) covers this situation?
HL7 is working on a PHR system functional model, and has issues with the US centric definition of many PHRs developed in the US. What do you see as the relationship between CCHIT and HL7 and how do you plan to reconcile the differences between the two organizations (for example, CCHIT’s definition could be a profile of the HL7 functional model definition)?
How are you funded?
How would these criteria apply to patient portals of EHR vendors? Will this be separately tested?
I think that a consumer may be confused between “PHR” and the professional medical record. I don’t see that a specific distinction has been drawn. The consumer should be made aware that the “provider” of a PHR may not be the patient’s health care provider, and that the certification criteria are not meant to apply to the professional provider’s medical record.
I have read the 3 year criteria, and have submitted comments to a central location in my organization. We intend to comment together. In addition, I participate on the PHR workgroup with HL7. The requirements I saw indicate they are in the categories of privacy, security and interoperability. Where are the functionality requirements that Dr. Pettit referred to?
Will a PHR system that has been certified by CCHIT, interoperate with a PHR system that has been certified by other nations?
Thank you for submitting your questions!
During the call, we’ll get to as many of them as we can. If we do not get to your question during the call, we will work to answer it online in the near future.
Can you describe how this standard effort compares to the effort to standardize the EMR? Is there a set of data that they have in common and are you working toward the two records communicating?
Is there a key for the “criteria reference” section of the draft criteria?
As an active technical committee member of HITSP’s Emergency Responder Use Case (which covers PHR patient data interoperability from on-scene emergency responder care through emergency room treatment) and given the fact that CCHIT states that one of the primary benefits of having a PHR is to “save your life in an emergency”, I urge CCHIT to modify it’s first draft of ‘09 interoperability criteria to reflect the PHR interoperability requirements of HITSP’s Emergency Responder Use Case IS-04.
Will you be certifying Google’s ‘Google Health’ and Microsoft’s ‘HealthVault’?
Thanks,
Phil Beenhouwer
The MITRE Corporation
Will the PHR be required to meet one hundred percent of criteria, how many yrs will the certification be good for, conditional certification?
With whom can I follow up the question about doctor/patient privilege.
Your answer stating that information coming from a doctor and stored in PHRs is news. I’ve not heard that anywhere. Once it is in the patient’s possession, how can it automatically be PHI. For example, fitness for duty reports, which has patient information in them, are not considered to contain PHI by HIPAA.
So I’d like to further explore the distinction you are making.
Thanks,
Dennis Melamed
Editor
Health Information Privacy/Security Alert
703.704.5665
I’m concerned that it may be premature for CCHIT with so many models coming out. MS says Healthvault is NOT a PHR. How are you going to avoid confusing the public?
Will there be “conditional” certification like the one for EHRs?
Thank you for your participation!
Can you tell us how you are addressing the standard medical language especially with consideration being given to a interoperable PHR world wide? What format is likely to to utilized given that even CPT is modified specifically for the US?
Thank you
I do agree there are many models of PHRs coming out and in many forms and shapes from a USB device, to a chip, to online records. There could in fact be many variables to consider here and as technology is evolving so quickly there are things that could be outdated the day after certifications is done.
I used to program so this I can say for a fact as I dealt with it all the time when I wrote an EMR several years ago, which now much more beyond what one developer can do and the same applies for the PHR.
The one item worth stressing is making it simple for the consumer and using the vendors with HL7 or even CCR to enter the data, as the success rate of having an individual create an an entire record is slim and none, thus the software programs that require an extensive amount of input from the consumer won’t make it.
This leads to another potential area now as far as certification of the vendors used by the PHR companies too, maybe? I mention this due to the issues with medical devices and software failures or errors, and they do happen, so this could in fact go beyond just the software companies in essence, so that could take a while, but the FDA approvals could be utilized on those that require approval, but there are some that are consumer devices that do not.
Integration is also important and we have already seen movement in this direction with both Microsoft and Google with hospitals, as it is a natural and most recently I was impressed with the option of adding a fax to the HealthVault to enter documents as that is a catch all for all the folks still in the “low tech” areas, and it makes it simple to get the documents in the file, same process as internet faxing. Of course we don’t want all documents arriving in that format and HL7 is a better choice on those that can be formatted, but it is a catch all for anything else that doesn’t fit.
Both Google and the HealthVault have audit trails too so a consumer can back track and see what was done if they forget, very important as if someone has a record that would be questionable, the audit trails would show the transaction. As far as security I think both Google and Microsoft are less worry some than other systems that are out there as they take care of the enterprise and when is the last time you heard of a break in to one of their servers, not in many years. They are the experts as nobody has more beta hacking testers so they have to be good. I post about security breaches in healthcare all the time and none have been at their levels, more so hospitals, insurers, etc.
For the entire process to start to begin to be a success the physicians and hospitals will need to buy in, and a couple have already, thus the education process begins with consumers and most would view this favorably if most of the information was done for them in an automated process, and back once more to integration outside of the device area, the Google and Microsoft do their own certification process to add vendors, and an outline of what qualifications are required from both might prove to be very helpful to know what they look for from their end.
Again, being that the PHR touches many other data areas, it’s certainly will be a process for sure and the privacy of the consumer is number one as well as aggressively addressing educating the general public. Once the physicians and hospitals see a benefit in the reduction of administrative time chasing paper, they will jump on the bandwagon as well to promote as they will stand to benefit with huge administrative time gains with staff that can be taking care of other items rather than chasing paper. Myself, I believe all EHR software should interconnect with an HL7 format, they do it already with the labs and other concerns so it’s just one more API to be added, so with that said we could have some areas of joint CCHIT and PHR certification as well down the road. One other item to think about as well is the server up time on where the records are stored, as a network of clusters and fall over servers will do the trick, so that should also enter in the picture as well.
Those are just a few of my own thoughts on the matter for what ever it might be worth in the process.
Has thought gone into the evidenced based programs specifically Chronic Disease Self Management as a criteria for certification?
Leave a Comment