Patient-Centered Care and Portability Workgroup (Wed Apr 16, 2014 1pm – 2pm Eastern Time)

As vendors, developers, and caretakers of health information technology, OSEHRA members and staff should have a deep and abiding interest in verifying that the tools of which we are justifiably proud of do, in fact, perform the functions they are intended to in a safe, convenient, efficient manner. As with any other area of endeavor, that means getting feedback from the end users: in our case, those end users are both clinical staff and the patients whose records are being created, stored, manipulated, mined, and analyzed. The ‘real’ world – outside of our development labs and testing frameworks – is messy, difficult, sometimes capricious, occasionally exasperating, and frequently wrong about what we are doing and why we are doing it. It doesn’t matter. As a mentor of mine was fond of saying, “Perception is more important than reality,” which is another way of saying that the customer is always right – even when the customer is wrong. A very pertinent case in point, the Healthcare.gov website, was – for whatever reason – developed in a vacuum, never tested end-to-end prior to implementation, never mind tested for ease of use, and it was a disaster. Not because the reason it was created was bad, but because the developers never bothered to find out if someone who didn’t know what it was supposed to do could use it.

That is a long introduction to the topic of this email – the Patient Centered Care and Portability working group. I have been struggling for several months to get traction again and I have reached the point where I need to drop back and punt. I have a number of fairly simple questions:
1. What is the interest in continuing this working group?
My own sense is that it should be a crucial adjunct to the otherwise overwhelmingly technical focus of the rest of the work we do, but I don’t know how to make it so on my own.
2. What form should the group take?
I am open to changing everything – time, frequency, length of calls, coordination with other groups.
3. Assuming that there is interest, what topics relating to our industry would you like to explore?
Meaningful Use, ICD-10 conversion, helping clinicians deal with HIT, helping HIT developers and vendors understand clinicians…
4. Last, is there anyone (you, or someone you know) who would like to lead a discussion on a pertinent topic?

Please reply with your thoughts and suggestions.

Patient-Centered Care and Portability Workgroup