ONC Health IT Certification Program - Updated Test Procedures and Companion Guides - 30Sep16
For September 2016, ONC updated the following test procedure, companion guides, test tools and other aspects related to their 2015 Edition testing program. Links to documents or relevant release emails are include below as appropriate. Summary of changes and commentary of potential impact to developers as determined by Chart Lux staff are included.
TEST PROCEDURE
Summary of Change:
Explicitly clarified that health IT system under test must be able to record at least two ethnicities as well as two races via the CDC race and ethnicity code set and then aggregate them to the core OMB race and ethnicity categories.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. In their previous update to this test procedure, ONC stated this requirement, but the way the wrote the test step did not necessarily make it clear that you also had to be able to record both two different race and two different ethnicities. In this update, they added a totally separate step to make clear the health IT system can record two ethnicities on the patient. While almost a clarification, some systems may have only been prepared to record multiple races but not ethnicities so it is worth noting.
Summary of Change:
Made the testing of supporting maximum field lengths out of scope for many aspects of the SCRIPT standard.
Impact and Commentary:
Moderate. SCRIPT eRx standard by NCPDP requires supporting the maximum length of several fields. For example, a City’s name can be a maximum of 35 characters, and the standard expects implementations to be able to support using all 35 characters if necessary. As a result, some NCPDP supplied test data for the test tool used the max length (e.g. “ReallyLongCityNameForTerryHoitz123”). However, many EHR systems were not designed to support this and were encountering some errors.
ONC relaxed this requirement in the test procedure, at least for testing. For fields in Appendix A of the test procedure, it notes that the max field lengths will not be in scope for testing and errors from the test tool will in fact be considered warnings.
Summary of Change:
Updates to better clarify activities on respective ETT test cases.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. Changes clarify the test cases description to more align with the actual activity done in the test case. As before, the key principle is be able to complete all the required test cases in the ETT.
COMPANION GUIDES
Summary of Change:
Changed the link to the CDC Race and Ethnicity Code Set as previously discuss, and added some examples for coding implantable devices as well as birth sex.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. The examples provided for both implantable devices as well as birth sex come from the HL7 Task Force examples. These are good resources to use for understanding how to code the CCDA.
Summary of Change:
Changed the link to the CDC Race and Ethnicity Code Set.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. The standard is the same, but you can now find it at another site besides the CDC. Go to https://vsac.nlm.nih.gov/#download-tab and then select the CDCREC Roll-up codes to download the spreadsheet of the races and their aggregated OMB race. It is a nice resource (and is similar to the race and ethnicity spreadsheet Chart Lux had already given to its customers ;).
Summary of Change:
Minor rewrite for clarification.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. Some minor clarification.
Summary of Change:
Added clarification on use of IMAP and POP3.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. Refer to previous analysis of ONC updates with the 315.b.1 test procedure. This just brings the companion guide in line with the test procedures changes from last month.
Summary of Change:
Made the testing of supporting maximum field lengths out of scope for many aspects of the SCRIPT standard.
Impact and Commentary:
Moderate. Same update as for test procedure described above.
TEST TOOLS
Summary of Change:
Minor update to new version 1.2.10. Release notes from this update and previous ones can be found on the Google Group elist here.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. Just small corrections and updates.
Summary of Change:
Update to new version 1.4. Release notes are found in Documentation link on tool.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. Several updates made, including support for testing via SOAP interface. Overall, correction of bugs found. It does not make major changes to the tool, but developers should still confirm they can properly create the messages per the test cases.
Summary of Change:
ONC has completed their scheduled transition of the ETT to their “Transport Testing Platform” or “TTP”. Also, ONC announced the C-CDA validator and associated test data packages will be updated on a monthly cycle of last Monday of each month.
Impact and Commentary:
Minor. This is more about where the tool will be hosted rather than a change to the tool itself so it not an impact to a development timeline for certification. However, if developers do not already have it bookmarked, they should bookmark https://ttpedge.sitenv.org/ttp/#/home. Also, knowing the schedule plans for updating the validator and test data will help developers in planning for their testing and development activities.
