ehr onc final certification - Department of Health Care Services

or outreach Generate patient lists. Enable a user to electronically select,
sort, retrieve, and generate lists of patients according to, at a
minimum, the data elements included in:
(1) Problem list;
(2) Medication list;
(3) Demographics; and
(4) Laboratory test results.
Comments. Several commenters requested clarification regarding the set of
variables that should be included in the demographic information for the patient lists.
Some of these commenters suggested that the gender, race, ethnicity and preferred
language of the patient should be included in this data set. One commenter suggested
that the final rule should explicitly adopt and incorporate the recommendations of a
report published by the Institute of Medicine in mid-2009 entitled, “Race, Ethnicity and
Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement.”
Response. We appreciate the commenters’ suggestions, and we have used them
to clarify this certification criterion. It was our intention that Certified EHR Technology
would be able to leverage the information, specifically the structured data it has available
to it, to assist eligible professionals and eligible hospitals to generate patient lists. We
have clarified this certification criterion to express this intent. Accordingly, we expect
that Certified EHR Technology will be able to generate patient lists according to certain
data elements for which structured data will be available: medical problems; medications;
demographics; and laboratory test results. While we respect the work completed by the
Institute of Medicine, we do not believe that the public has had an adequate opportunity
to consider its recommendations related to demographics in the context of certification,
and we are therefore not including them as a condition of certification at this time. We
encourage the HIT Standards Committee to consider this report as it recommends
standards to the National Coordinator.
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