Technical outcome – Health IT can create health care survey data for electronic transmission in compliance with all mandatory elements and requirements of the HL7® CDA National Health Care Surveys (NHCS) Implementation Guide (IG).
- Health IT Modules certified to the 45 CFR 170.315(f)(7) “Transmission to public health agencies—health care surveys" criterion using the HL7 CDA® R2 Implementation Guide: National Health Care Surveys (NHCS), Release 1, DSTU Release 1.2 – US Realm may retain their certified status until required to recertify according to the ONC Health IT Certification Program. Health IT developers newly certifying or recertifying Health IT Modules to the criterion at 45 CFR 170.315(f)(7) are required to use the standards referenced by 45 CFR 170.315(f)(7) or available via the Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP).
- For the public health certification criteria in § 170.315(f), health IT will only need to be certified to those criteria that are required to meet the measures the provider intends to report on to meet Objective 8: Public Health and Clinical Data Registry Reporting.
- ONC clarified in the 2015 Edition Final Rule that the entire IG would be covered as part of certification. [80 FR 62669] ONC further clarifies that certification to each survey within the IG would be based on the selection of the health IT developer. ONC expects that such selection would be based on the healthcare setting that the Health IT Module presented for certification is intended to support. To illustrate, a Health IT Module designed to support providers practicing in:
- An office setting would be presented for certification to NAMCS.
- A hospital-based outpatient setting would be presented for certification to NHAMCS with the appropriate IG-identified outpatient constraints.
- An emergency department would be presented for certification to NHAMCS with the appropriate IG-identified emergency department constraints.
- Health IT developers can choose to use the flexibility of the Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP) to use more advanced version(s) of standard(s) than the version(s) incorporated by reference in the regulation for this certification criterion. To comply with the Maintenance of Certification requirement in § 170.405(b), a developer that chooses to pursue such updates must include in their Real World Testing plan each Certified Health IT Module updated to newer version(s) of any standard(s) prior to August 31 of the year in which their updates were made and test each Module the following calendar year for conformance to all applicable criteria within its scope, including the newer version(s) of any standard(s).
- Developers updating their already Certified Health IT Modules who choose to leverage the SVAP flexibility will be required to provide advance notice to all affected customers and its ONC-ACB. To be open and transparent to the public, health IT developers must also provide its ONC-ACB with a publicly accessible hyperlink to the SVAP Notice to be published with the Module on the ONC Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL).
