Welcome to HIMSS' Health IT Policy Update, bringing you the latest news on legislative and regulatory activities related to health IT from HIMSS' Government Relations office. We welcome your feedback, and if you're reading this complimentary newsletter online or receiving it as a forward, please subscribe.

Congressional Affairs

Telehealth Next on the Agenda for Institute for e-Health Policy
The Institute for e-Health Policy will host a Capitol Hill Lunch seminar on April 16th to discuss “Telehealth - Implementation Barriers in Rural and Urban America.”
Click the link for details on panelists and to RSVP.

Congress Patches Medicare SGR, Again
In a new post on the HIMSS blog, Senior Director of Congressional Affairs Rich Hodge writes, “With passage by the Congress and the President’s signature of HR 4302, the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, Medicare reimbursement for physician was preserved from the SGR (Sustainable Growth Rate) reduction of 24 percent. However, it is important to remember what the Nation did not get.
Click the link above to read more.

Federal Affairs

EHR Incentive Program Data for February 2014 Released
The Health IT Policy Committee met on April 8, 2014, for its monthly meeting, and received reports from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT.  The CMS report on registration and payment data for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program included information through February 2014.
Click the link to learn more.

IOM Releases Report on EHR Inclusion of Social/Behavioral Domains
On April 8, 2014, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released Capturing Social and Behavioral Domains in Electronic Health Records: Phase 1.  The IOM Committee that created the report developed a set of six criteria that can be used to identify core domains for inclusion in EHRs.
Click the link for details.

HIMSS Regulatory Chart Tracks Health IT Regulations
The HIMSS regulatory chart offers an at-a-glance snapshot of all health IT-related regulation HIMSS is following in 2014. The chart includes links to proposed and final regulations and to HIMSS comments and position statements, along with anticipated timelines.

State Affairs

Stakeholder Summit Showcases EMRAM Stage 7 Achiever and Davies Awardee’s Innovative Use of Health IT
Children’s Medical Center, the seventh-largest pediatric health care provider in the nation, and the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) hosted the Health Information Technology Stakeholder Summit and tour on March 6. About 40 health IT stakeholders from across the country attended the day-long event to see first-hand Children’s advanced use of technology across its continuum of care and to gain a more thorough understanding of how incorporating health IT into healthcare can improve processes, drive efficiency, lower costs and deliver better patient care.
Click the link to read more.

HIMSS News

NEW! Meeting Your Patient-Facing Meaningful Use Goals
Join the HIMSS Connected Patient Community for this complimentary event on April 15. Hear speakers Stasia Kahn, MD, President of Symphony Medical Group, and Lori Posk, MD, Medical Director for MyChart the Cleveland Clinic's Personal Patient Portal. We will dive into how Meaningful Use Stage 2 has specific patient engagement requirements for eligible providers.  Hear how to increase patient activation levels, view/download/transmit, and how to utilize electronic messaging. Join the HIMSS Connected Patient Community here.

Registration Still Open for April Business Intelligence Forum
The pressures to manage costs while improving the quality of care will not disappear any time soon. By mining the large amounts of data being collected through healthcare organization and applying Business Intelligence, many providers are identifying opportunities to improve effectiveness in a number of ways, ranging from improving readmission rates to increasing patient engagement. To help providers take advantage of these opportunities, HIIMSS Media is presenting a two-day conference, the Healthcare Business Intelligence Forum, April 16-17, in Washington, DC. The event will provide implementation-level information to help healthcare organizations gain insight by applying best practices in the use of Business Intelligence.

Join HIMSS at Health Datapalooza 2014
HIMSS will be exhibiting at Health Datapalooza 2014, the Health Data Consortium’s premier national conference on liberating health data to achieve better health outcomes, improve health care and lower costs. Join key health care influencers for this exciting event June 1-3 in Washington, D.C.  Keynotes include Jonathan Blum, Steven Brill, Jonathan Bush, Francis Collins, Elliott Fisher, Atul Gawande, Rt. Hon. Jeremy Hunt, Vinod Khosla, Adriana Lukas, Todd Park and Hon. Kathleen Sebelius. Follow @hdpalooza on Twitter for the latest updates on keynotes, app demos and more.

Interoperability report reflects the IT challenge that lies beneath all the others
Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have long been considered one of the potential linchpins of healthcare reform, but they are still very much a work in progress, with many questions yet to be answered. Recently, in his new role as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, former ONC director Farzad Mostashari took a close look at one of the ACOs, the central Florida-based Physicians Collaborative Trust ACO, LLC (PCT-ACO), that is participating in CMS’ Advanced Payment Model ACO demonstration. Read more here.

NEW! HIMSS C&BI Data and Analytics Task Force
The HIMSS Clinical & Business Intelligence Data and Analytics Task Force is accepting members to help create the tools and resources providers and provider organizations need to manage, integrate and aggregate the necessary information to support robust data and analysis that will facilitate effective reporting by translating data into meaningful knowledge, resulting in improved quality, clinical and financial outcomes. Monthly meetings are held on the third Tuesday of the month from 1-2 p.m. (ET). Contact Nancy Devlin for more information.