Everyone understands today that standards for data, communication, and terminology are the lynch pins of health information exchange across clinical care. But who is doing something about it? Earlier this quarter, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) published a draft seeking feedback in three major areas:

• Vocabulary, Code Set, and Terminology
• Content and Structure
• Services

Lantana submitted a response to ONC Draft 2016 Interoperability Standards Advisory that provided recommendations for terminology and content standards in these areas:

• Functional Status/Disability
• Immunization
• Care Plan
• Clinical Decision Support
• Electronic Prescribing Interoperability
• Patient Education
• Public Health Reporting Interoperability
• Clinical Decision Support Services

Our comments were geared toward ensuring that best practices for data validation, testing, and quality reporting are part of the government plan. This improves care quality.

Greater detail on these comments is available here, and our comments on a parallel request for comment on several CMS programs for value-based purchasing are here.