The National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) has went on record saying the concept of metadata in electronic health records (EHR) is too new and unreliable to require tagging in EHRs in Stage 2.
We found this interesting news on Information Week Healthcare in their article, “Opposition Grows To Meaningful Use Metadata.” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is expected to finalize rules for the second stage of the federal EHR incentive program by the middle of 2012. Metadata tagging can increase the reliability and findability of indexed records, health or otherwise. Of course, we believe in the integrity of standards. Whether these have been reviewed and tested to the point of being adopted or are prematurely being considered, I can’t say. It will be interesting to see how this works out, especially considering the ICD-10 implementation on everyone’s horizon.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
