Monthly Update

December 2018 in Review

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In This Issue…

  1. #AIRA2019 National Meeting
  2. AIM, AIRA, and CDC Meeting
  3. Clinical Decision Support – Rolling into the New Year with CDS Assessment
  4. AIRA's Staff Meet In Person to Get a Jump-start on the New Year
  5. A New Year's Resolution: IIS-Style
  6. HIMSS19 Interoperability and HIE Symposium Collaborator
  7. Can You Complete the AIRA 2018 Crossword?
  8. Recent Information Requests Added to the AIRA Repository
  9. Steering Committee Updates: December Recap

Check Out the AIRA Events Calendar for Upcoming…


 The call for abstracts, registration, and award nominations for the AIRA 2019 National Meeting is now open! 


 AIM, AIRA, and CDC Meeting  

On December 11, AIM and AIRA leadership and staff along with Brock Lamont, program operations branch chief, and Lynn Gibbs-Scharf, acting immunization information system support branch chief, met in New Orleans, Louisiana, to better identify synergies between the organizations and opportunities for greater collaboration. The meeting kicked off with AIM, AIRA, and CDC discussing their key projects related to IIS. A robust discussion followed with the identification of areas that can be challenging to navigate, such as contracts, funding, and program relationships. Additional topics discussed during the meeting included the need to utilize IIS data and functions within immunization programs, the need for program managers and IIS managers to work together to respond to the upcoming CDC cooperative agreement application, and identifying opportunities to collaboratively develop business rules for various IIS operations. Next steps following the meeting include the AIM and AIRA presidents drafting a joint letter that will be sent to both the immunization program managers and IIS managers highlighting the need to work collaboratively and a potential follow-up meeting prior to the CDC all-awardee meeting in late January.


Clinical Decision Support – Rolling into the New Year with CDS Assessment

AIRA and the members of MACAW (the Measurement for Assessment and Certification Advisory Workgroup) are excited to share that the fourth content area of the Measurement and Improvement Initiative, Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Assessment is being rolled out in the new year.

The measures for CDS were discussed on a Town Hall webinar in May of 2018 and approved by MACAW and the AIRA board in June, but additional data was needed to set the thresholds for the percentage of test cases needed to meet each of 12 CDS measures. Since CDS testing leverages hundreds of test cases, there was significant discussion about what proportion needed to be passed to meet a given measure. In December, the board approved the thresholds as recommended by MACAW:

  • Meets: 90–100%
  • Deviates: 65–89%
  • Does not meet: less than 65%

Additionally, MACAW recommended, and the board approved, an expectation the thresholds be raised within one to two years. More information on CDS Assessment thresholds can be found here.

The first CDS Discovery and Assessment reports will be available in January in AART (the Aggregate Analysis Reporting Tool) for authorized users. Users will see an updated dashboard and will be able to view results for all four content areas in AART. Admin users are also asked to confirm their participation and sharing settings. More information about participation and sharing settings can be found here.

For questions or comments, please contact Kristi Siahaya.


AIRA's Staff Meet to Get a Jump-start on the New Year

AIRA held an in-person staff meeting for three days in early December to review organizational priorities, discuss progress on strategies under AIRA’s Cooperative Agreements, and plan for AIRA’s future. The meeting also provided a great opportunity for the staff to work together and unite under AIRA’s mission. AIRA’s last in-person staff meeting was held in August 2017. Since then, four new staff members have been added to the team. 


A New Year's Resolution: IIS-Style

Tired of the same old New Year’s resolutions? Do something different this year and resolve to learn more about IIS. Here are a few options for increasing your IIS knowledge:

  • New to IIS (or looking to review IIS basics)?
    • The Welcome to IIS Email Course, from the Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII), delivers a broad foundation of knowledge on IIS in an easy, accessible format: one email a day delivered to your inbox for 18 weekdays. Each email takes 5 to 10 minutes to read and contains a brief lesson, resources for further study, and interactive activities so you can apply what you’ve learned to your system and jurisdiction.
    • PHII’s Fundamentals of IIS provides three popular online courses in one collection! This course collection builds a fundamental understanding of three essential topics for IIS staff: Data Quality, Interoperability, and HL7 Basics.
  • Want to do a deeper dive into a topic area?
    • PHII’s Advanced HL7 for IIS course builds on HL7 Basics to dive deeper into how HL7 works.
    • Build your own curriculum! The AIRA repository is a great place to search by topic to find guides, webinars, and resources.

Have fun with your new resolution, you IIS-smarty!


HIMSS19 Interoperability and HIE Symposium Collaborator

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2019 Annual Conference & Exhibition will take place February 11–15, 2019, in Orlando, Florida. AIRA is pleased to be a collaborator for the Interoperability and HIE Symposium titled “Pulse Check: Learning from Today’s Interoperability and HIE Successes and Unlocking the Potential of Tomorrow,” which will be offered on Monday, February 11, 2019, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

AIRA will also be offering an informational session/networking opportunity titled “Immunization Information Systems – Bringing Value, Lowering Burden for Providers” on Tuesday, February 12 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Orlando - Rosen Centre Salon 11. This session will provide an opportunity to learn and ask more about IIS: what value they bring and how they lower burden for providers and public health. If you are planning to attend HIMSS19, please join us for an interactive discussion. Ask the experts about interoperability, clinical decision support, outbreak response, and more. Join AIRA senior leadership for this unique opportunity being offered at HIMSS19.

AIRA members interested in attending HIMSS19 can take advantage of our collaborator discount. To receive the discount, go to the conference website and select “Register Now.” Select AIRA from the “Conference Collaborating Organizations” drop-down in the registration process and enter the code “COLLABH19.”


Can You Complete the AIRA 2018 Crossword? 

Across

  1. The tool for cleansing addresses is called ______Streets (hint)

7.   AIRA got a beautiful new ______ in 2018 (hint)

8.   Reports that show a summary of where IIS are as a network in meeting standards and best practices (the cover of the report has a multicolored US map) (hint)

11. City in Idaho that hosted a regional workshop

12. The IIS Health Level ______ User Group met 12 times in 2018 (hint)

14. There are 51 IIS connected for testing to the ______ Analysis Reporting Tool (hint)

16. The December Education Webinar was titled “The _______ Health Advantage”

17. AIRA 2018 National Meeting host city (initials) (hint)

18. Last name of the current board president (hint)

19. A recent guide is about identifying immunization pockets of ______ (hint)

Down

2.   Tool where you can access your IIS assessment and validation reports (acronym) (hint)

3.   _________ Committees guide the work of AIRA (hint)

4.   The newest data quality guide focuses on data at ____ (hint)

5.   The most important part of every AIRA project (hint)

6.   The AIRA standards team puts the “fun” in this new series of guides, with Vol. 1 released in February 2018 and Vol. 2 coming in March 2019 (hint)

9.   It was AFIX, but now it’s _____ (hint)

10. The AIRA resource _________ enables you to browse by topic or search for what you need (hint)

13. The next measurement area is Clinical Decision ______ (CDS) (hint)

15. This initial stage in the Measurement and Improvement Initiative, Discovery & __________ allows IIS to understand          better how their system operates in the context of community-wide standards (hint)


Recent Information Requests Added to the AIRA Repository

A recent Information Request regarding user manuals and individual training materials has been added to the AIRA repository and can be found by using the “Information Requests” filter. Information Requests are viewable only by individual members and individuals affiliated with member and partner organizations. Just log in to view these valuable resources! If you have any questions, please email membership coordinator Amanda Branham.


Steering Committee Updates: December Recap

Assessment Steering Committee

  • The Assessment Steering Committee met on December 11 and received updates on the message quality evaluation tool, data at rest, and coverage assessment projects.
  • The committee was updated on the recently selected data quality project on patient status.
  • The ASC meets quarterly, and the next meeting is scheduled for March 5, 2019. 

Education Steering Committee

  • The Education Steering Committee met on December 19 and received an update from the Public Health Informatics Institute on its recent procurement workshop and the progress on its immunization evaluation and forecasting eLearning module in development.
  • The ESC discussed the current Education Plan and began planning for the next year.
  • The December edition of SnapShots is available in the AIRA repository.
  • The committee also was updated on 2019 National Meeting planning.
  • The ESC hosted a webinar reprise on Thursday, December 20 of Scott Burris’s keynote at the AIRA 2018 National Meeting. 
Standards and Interoperability Steering Committee
  • The Standards and Interoperability Steering Committee (SISC) met on December 12 and briefly discussed the Functional Guide on CDC-endorsed data elements and the ONC (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology) report on reducing provider burden out for the committee’s review.
  • The SISC also followed up on the FDA notice of possible changes on the future format of the National Drug Codes, OBX-14 suggested values, and capturing birth sex, administrative sex, and sexual orientation/gender identity
  • The committee also discussed the current utilization of TB skin tests and guidance on sending preferred/contraindication vaccine OBX segments.
  • Due to scheduling conflicts, the SISC Technical Workgroup did not meet during the month of December.

MIROW Steering Committee

  • The Modeling of Immunization Registry Operations Workgroup (MIROW) Steering Committee (SC) met on December 20 and discussed the new MIROW topic (business continuity), the status of the MIROW subgroup projects, and the turnaround document for the MIROW session at the AIRA National Meeting.
  • The MIROW Small Group is currently drafting a detailed outline of the Business Continuity Guide and planning for the subject matter expert face-to-face meeting in February.
  • Three MIROW subgroups continue to work, respectively, on repackaging past guides, creating a common vocabulary document for all MIROW guides, and promoting the work of MIROW.