William, You're missing the point here....HIMSS membership represents the community of provider information technology professionals (including membership of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, the decision makers), and as such represents a major constituency of this work group.
My purpose in posting these messages was not to just keep this group abreast of HIMSS or the efforts towards a NHII. Currently, this group has precious little active input and/or participation from the provider sector. And since one could assume that the provider sector will/could/is intended to be a major beneficiary of the results of this work group's efforts, I would hope that a proactive outreach to them could ensue since it does appear that there are areas of need that converge. I am not at all advocating that this work group expand its scope into other aspects of the NHII. However, interoperability and connectivity are central to both a NHII and HIPAA. What I am advocating is an effort to reach out to HIMSS and its membership for greater participation and input into this group's efforts rather than ignore or downplay such an influential group. Rachel Rachel Foerster Principal Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd. Professionals in EDI & Electronic Commerce 39432 North Avenue Beach Park, IL 60099 Phone: 847-872-8070 Fax: 847-872-6860 http://www.rfa-edi.com -----Original Message----- From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, June 22, 2002 2:08 PM To: WEDi/SNIP ID & Routing Subject: Re: HIMSS News Health Care Goes Digital Doctors and hospitals find they can't stay offline any longer Thanks to Rachel for keeping us abreast of the fine work HIMSS is doing in the area of Healthcare Informatics. Of course, it's no surprise that "HIPAA was hospital executives' top priority over the next two years." And that's why we're involved in WEDI/SNIP - in order to facilitate best practices for the successful implementation of the HIPAA standards. So we're going to do our very best in this remote corner of WEDI/SNIP and AFEHCT to develop recommendations for a digital "dialtone" providing for the safe, secure and reliable routing of HIPAA standard transactions. Other pressing Healthcare information-technology issues - such as prescription order-entry technology and efforts to increase patient safety and reduce medical errors - while laudable, are unfortunately not part of our bailiwick. Perhaps discussion of these issues could be moved to a more general forum such as HIPAAlive. About the closest we in the ID & Routing SIG are going to get to prescription order-entry technology is perhaps supporting the HIPAA standard NCPDP transactions. If NCPDP's routing requirements are anything like those of X12, they should definitely be part of our recommendations. William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. Columbus, US-OH 43221-3859 +1 (614) 487-0320 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rachel Foerster" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WEDi SNIP 4 (E-mail 3)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, 20 June, 2002 01:51 PM Subject: HIMSS News Health Care Goes Digital Doctors and hospitals find they can't stay offline any longer Here's a link to the full article reprinted with permission from the Wall Street Journal at HIMSS web site. I've extracted the paragraph below as a key point of interest. http://www.himss.org Rachel "In planning IT systems, HIPAA is in the forefront of many hospital executives' minds. In the most recent survey by HIMSS, getting compliant with HIPAA was hospital executives' top priority over the next two years. In the HIMSS survey, 74% of health-care providers said clinical-information systems, such as prescription order-entry technology, will be the most important health-care information-technology priority over the next two years, up from 64% the previous year. Using technology to promote patient safety and reduce medical errors was the second most-pressing information-technology issue identified by respondents, now and for the next two years." Rachel Foerster Principal Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd. Professionals in EDI & Electronic Commerce 39432 North Avenue Beach Park, IL 60099 Phone: 847-872-8070 Fax: 847-872-6860 http://www.rfa-edi.com discussions on this listserv therefore represent the views of the individual participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the WEDI Board of Directors nor WEDI SNIP. If you wish to receive an official opinion, post your question to the WEDI SNIP Issues Database at http://snip.wedi.org/tracking/. Posting of advertisements or other commercial use of this listserv is specifically prohibited. discussions on this listserv therefore represent the views of the individual participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the WEDI Board of Directors nor WEDI SNIP. If you wish to receive an official opinion, post your question to the WEDI SNIP Issues Database at http://snip.wedi.org/tracking/. Posting of advertisements or other commercial use of this listserv is specifically prohibited.
