ONC releases patient data ‘preferences’ draft:
Public Comment is due Friday, Oct 16, 2009
Joseph Conn, HITS staff writer for Modern Healthcare, broke the story on ONC’s draft document on consumer preferences for personal data included in electronic health records for information exchange on October 7, 2009. Public comment is due Friday, October 16, 2009. As Conn reports “HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has released for public comment a 42-page draft document intended to ultimately guide and perhaps even control healthcare organizations in how patients’ can express their “preferences” on the use of their medical records and healthcare data.” Conn provides context for the draft.
The draft says “This Requirement Document is focused on information needed to facilitate the electronic exchange of consumer preferences regarding the use and management of their associated needs.”
This document is made up of nine sections including scenarios and process diagrams.
Excerpted from draft:
Section 1.0, Preface, includes a Requirements Document Review Guidance, that indicates who the end users of this document are intended to be and what sections may be most relevant to these various end users. Additionally, this section outlines the amended approach utilized to develop the Requirements Document, describes the sections of the document and denotes any significant changes from previous Use Cases.
Section 2.0, Introduction and Scope, describes the background, progress to date, the request being made to HITSP and the scope of that request.
Section 3.0, Stakeholders, lists the individual stakeholders and organizations that participate in the activities described in this Requirements Document.
Section 4.0, Issues and Policy Implications, describes issues, obstacles and policy considerations and/or implications related to accommodating and supporting consumer preferences.
Section 5.0, Perspectives & Scenarios, describes the perspectives/roles of the stakeholders participating in the events and actions of the underlying scenarios that are supported by the process diagrams and information exchanges described in later sections.
Section 6.0, Process Diagrams, depicts the business processes surrounding consumer preferences that may or may not involve health information exchange; the process diagrams are described in the Events and Actions component of this section.
Section 7.0 Information Exchanges; depicts the focused information exchanges that standards development organizations should address.
Section 8.0, Functional Needs, describes the combination of end-user needs and system behaviors that support interoperability and information exchange.
Section 9.0, Data Set Considerations, provides a comprehensive (though not exhaustive) framework that can be used to support standards development and to accommodate the major types of consumer preferences.
Appendix A, Glossary, provides contextual descriptions of key concepts and terms introduced in this Requirements Document.
ONC’s Consumer Preferences Requirements Document Page
Consumer Preferences Draft Requirements Document (pdf)
Feedback Instructions
The draft and public feedback is being managed by ONC’s Requirements Documents Team.
