A Standard Problem
Everyone has an opinion about what will make nationwide EHR adoption. But the one thing most agree upon is the need for standards. A number of organizations and government entities have already vowed to develop a common language or designated format for EHRs, and yet another group has thrown its hat into the ring.
The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs has joined with Health Level 7 (HL7), Accredited Standards Committee X12, ASTM International and the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium to form the Standards Charter Organization (SCO). The new group is also supported by a sprinkling of other standardizing bodies, including the American National Standards Institute, Health Information Technology Standards Panel and Office of the National Coordinator.
The SCO's main objectives are to encourage collaborative among standardization entities and to harmonize standards for interoperability. So, basically, it's an organization that helps standardize the standards.
If you ask me, it all seems a bit...inefficient. Wouldn't it be easier to have one organization in charge of defining all standards? Of course, there would need to be a number of stakeholders involved in the development process, but at least it would yield one and only one set of standards. Having so many groups--from HL7 to the National eHealth Collaborative to Obama's proposed standards committee that has yet to be defined--is like a health care Russian doll gone wrong. Standards within standards just seems to add more complexity to something we're trying to simplify.
I'm curious to see what HIM professionals think about SCO, or about the standardization process in general. Do you think a single organization can develop effective standards, or are we better off giving the job to a number of groups and implementing the ones that work?