Meaningful use?

Meaningful use is one of those $500,000 words consultants use.  This is almost like asking will Outlook be certified for meaningful use.

Cloverleaf is a tool to tansmit data, and I believe does not fall under the auspices of meaningful use.  Only the billing systems, EMR’s and other ancillary systems really fall under this ruling.

Got a question about this: We were asked to find all threads/translates  that have hl7 version/variants under 2.3.1 . Management thinks that for meaningful use hl7 has to be a minimum of 2.3.1 . Does anyone that understands any of this know this to be true? I’m not sure it is but not %100.

Thanks.

One and All,

To prove the “quality” that is meaningful use of Cloverleaf ask the question:  what would happen if Cloverleaf disappeared off the radar for a day?   I am sure the senders and receivers of the integrator would come up with a definition of “meaningful use”.

On another side note here:  the only standard in HL7 is how you spell it. The other standards are routinely violated (ignored) by vendors anyway.

As a development note though:  I always like to develop in the highest available Cloverleaf standard and if necessary populate the MSH field for version to accommodate the vendors.   Some applications like Epic Systems mix up the standards anyway like placing 2.6 fields into 2.3 HL7 variants in the Epic software (at least so defined coming over to Cloverleaf).  NEVER implement a 2.1 HL7 variant – the fields never match up to versions beyond it!

Guess my decades of working on this stuff is showing up as synicism?

Ok… maybe a more “professional” response:  the HL7 variant specified by a vendor for their application meets the miminum requirements to transfer and receive patient data, i.e., in this context constitutes “meaningful use”.

Good luck, good hunting!

Robert, I laughed heartily at your quote, which has made my favorites list, by the way:

“the only standard in HL7 is how you spell it”

Another one I like is:

“When you’ve seen one HL7 interface…   You’ve seen one.”

😆

Alan,

Yours is a keeper too!

BobR

Kevin,

HITECH (a portion of meaningul use) current rule requires HL/7 2.3.1 or 2.5.1 for “Submission to Public Health Agencies for Surveillance or Reporting” and 2.5.1 for “Submission of Lab Results to Public Health Agencies”.

That said, those are the standards that you would use for exchange with those agencies the systems that send or receive those exchanges inside your hospital can be any message structure – even non-HL/7!!

Alan – I use to believe that about HL/7 myself (the spelling) until I saw a vendor’s statement they were fully compliant with H7/L – that convinced me all pretenses were gone  😆

The aspect of HITECH I see affecting our engines it this:

“Technical safeguards affect PHI that is maintained or transmitted by any electronic media. This section addresses issues involving authentication of users, audit logs, checking data integrity, and ensuring data transmission security.”

Some vendors are implementing features in their engines to audit or prevent manual changes and resends of msgs going their engines.  Anyone hear of any plans like this for Clover?

Tom, I thought the Advanced Security module, if purchased and implemented could prevent users from resending messages, etc.  If I recall, it was pretty granular as to what it would let you do.

So does sending HL7 2.3.1 or 2.5.1 for submission to Public Health Agencies for Surveillance or Reporting and 2.5.1 for submission of Lab Results to Public Helath Agencies qualify the interface to be “Certified”?

As I understand it as of yet there is no ‘certification’ required for Integration Engines.

There is a requirement certified or not that the message sets be of a certain version level and types as noted before. If the trading partner is receiving/sending those message sets then they can be certified but do at least comply with the HITECH constraints.