For Immediate Release
THE HEALTH STORY PROJECT ELECTS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Committee Primed to Raise Awareness and Adoption of the Health Story Project
Approach Promotes Continuity of Care and Clinical Decision Making
July 21, 2009 -- The Health Story Project announced today members of its first elected executive committee. The new committee will guide development of important data standards that support the flow of information between narrative documents and electronic health record (EHR) systems. The standards unlock essential knowledge contained in the narrative documents and enrich and facilitate the flow of this information into the EHR. This will increase the roll out and adoption of interoperable EHR systems and clinical document repositories that serve the enterprise and the emerging national and regional networks.
“With the financial investment now being allotted to industry to encourage adoption of the EHR, it is critically important to ensure that the path forward is viable and productive. The Health Story Project approach is particularly appealing as it allows physicians to continue to document using dictation while enhancing the EHR with indispensable information from clinical notes - promoting continuity of care and clinical decision making,” said Mark Ivie, Health Story Project executive committee member.
The new executive committee members include: Liora Alschuler, Principal, Alschuler Associates, LLC Tom Bang, President and CEO, A-Life Medical Scott Faulkner, CEO, InterFix, for AHDI/MTIA Joy Kuhl, The Health Story Project Susan Lucci, VP, Transcend Services, for AHIMA Nick Mahurin, CEO, InfraWare Kim Stavrinakis, Senior Manager, GE Healthcare Nick van Terheyden, MD, CMO, M*Modal Emmy Weber, VP Product Management, MedQuist
The Health Story Project, founded a little over two years ago, is a collaborative of healthcare vendors, providers and associations. This project develops HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) Implementation Guides for common types of electronic healthcare documents, brings them through the HL7 ballot process and promotes their adoption within the industry. Over the previous two years, the initiative supported the development of four technical implementation guides for standard electronic documents, including the Consultation Note, History and Physical, Operative Note and Diagnostic Imaging Report. Work is currently underway within HL7 to produce standards for the Discharge Summary.
The Health Story Project’s five-year plan includes ramping up development of implementation guides for additional types of clinical documents and promoting their adoption within industry. Members are also working to influence policy decisions that would provide incentives for those who take the Health Story approach toward enhancing their EHR systems with information from narrated notes – providing patients with comprehensive electronic records that offer a complete health story.
# # #
For more information contact:
Joy Kuhl
The Health Story Project
joy@optimalaccords.com
