Health Level Seven International (HL7) announces the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC’s) FHIR at Scale Taskforce (FAST) will transition into an HL7 FHIR Accelerator.
The FAST project was originally founded to identify Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) scalability barriers and define a common set of infrastructure standards for scalable FHIR solutions. As an Accelerator, FAST will continue its work under the purview of HL7 with a broad range of stakeholders informing and participating in the initiative.
“As a widely adopted standard supported by many of the most notable stakeholders in the health IT community, FHIR is making rapid, real-world progress toward addressing the biggest challenges of health data interoperability,” said HL7 International chief executive officer Charles Jaffe, M.D., Ph.D. “The FAST Accelerator will bring us closer to defining a consistent and scalable approach to deploying FHIR across high-value use cases and disseminating these best practices to the industry.”
FAST will complement and support the work of HL7’s other accelerators. While groups such as Vulcan, the Da Vinci Project, and CodeX develop standards to support specific functional use cases, FAST focuses on scalability approaches that implementers can leverage across use cases to simplify deployment and use of FHIR in disparate environments.
In early 2022, FAST formed a cross-stakeholder team to begin the transition from an ONC-convened initiative to an HL7 FHIR Accelerator. The team has been working to develop a framework for the accelerator’s scope of work, governance principles, and operating and funding models.
CAQH CORE and Health Level Seven International (HL7) announce a collaboration to address long-standing healthcare industry challenges by accelerating automation and improving interoperability between administrative and clinical systems. This is the first time these two organizations, which conduct complementary work to improve the electronic exchange of data across the healthcare industry, have collaborated on solutions to specific technical and administrative burdens.
“Our collaboration will help move the healthcare industry towards greater automation and streamlined business processes,” said April Todd, senior vice president, CAQH. “We are delighted to work with HL7 to address some of the biggest interoperability issues facing the industry.”
The two organizations will initially collaborate in three areas:
Prior Authorization: Currently, the prior authorization process is a labor intensive, time consuming, and costly administrative burden for providers and payers. It also frustrates patients and, in some cases, delays care. HL7 and CAQH CORE will collaborate to move the industry towards end-to-end automation of the prior authorization process.
Exchange of Medical Documentation: According to the CAQH Index, 84 percent of attachments, or documents that prove medical necessity, are exchanged manually and often contain too much, too little, or the wrong type of information. This delays prior authorizations, hinders the transition to value-based payments, and costs plans and providers time and money. HL7 and CAQH CORE will work to align their respective efforts to support the electronic exchange of clinical information and medical documentation.
Value-Based Payments: The transition to value-based payment models has been slowed by a patchwork of administrative and technical approaches and work-arounds. HL7 and CAQH CORE will work together to address the interoperability challenges causing administrative burden for innovative payment models.
“HL7 and CAQH have made great strides to improve the exchange of information in the healthcare continuum,” said Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, CEO, HL7 International. “Our collaboration will enable better alignment and accelerate progress toward interoperability between clinical and administrative systems.”
Health Level Seven International (HL7), announces the launch of the HL7 FHIR Accelerator Program. The program is based on a model piloted by the HL7 Argonaut Project and, more recently, the HL7 Da Vinci Project. The goal is to strengthen the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard and enhance market adoption through a programmatic approach available to myriad stakeholders.
Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD
“HL7 FHIR has achieved remarkable adoption on a global scale,” said Dr. Charles Jaffe, CEO of HL7. “An ever-growing community of implementers has emerged across a broad spectrum of health care, eager to participate in an agile onramp for FHIR adoption and implementation. The HL7 FHIR Accelerator Program provides the framework for that community to leverage the technical capability, management expertise and experience gained during the creation and growth of the Argonaut and Da Vinci Projects.”
Building on the success of current projects – Argonaut (provider-provider and provider-patient) and Da Vinci (payer-provider) – The CARIN Alliance has recently been approved as an HL7 FHIR accelerator project (payer-patient). The three projects are complementary initiatives.
“On behalf of the CARIN Alliance, its board and membership, we are grateful for the opportunity to work more closely with HL7 as part of the FHIR Accelerator Program as we work to develop additional FHIR implementation guides so consumers can get access to more of their health information,” said Ryan Howells, CARIN Alliance Project Manager and Principal at Leavitt Partners. “Consumers and their authorized caregivers are requesting more access to health care data with less friction to empower them to become more informed, shared decision-makers in the care they receive.”
The original concept behind accelerating HL7 FHIR began approximately four years ago with the advent of the Argonaut Project.
Health Level Seven International (HL7) announces the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC’s) FHIR at Scale Taskforce (FAST) will transition into an HL7 FHIR Accelerator.