“ONC announced its health IT demographic EHR certification requirements to standardize race and ethnicity data collection in the pursuit of health equity.”
“ONC outlined that the agency’s “demographics” certification criterion requires health IT to record race and ethnicity at the same level of detail as the CDC’s Race & Ethnicity code technology. This system encompasses over 900 concepts for race and ethnicity, giving patients precise options for self-identifying their demographic information.”
“’Race and ethnicity data are important for many uses, such as informing effective treatment and patient care, improving healthcare outcomes, research, and, identifying and eliminating health disparities to improve health equity,’ said ONC. ‘Race and ethnicity data are also critical to informing national priorities, including efforts to advance racial equity and to support underserved communities.'”
“The CDC’s 900 race and ethnicity concepts are organized to “roll up” to meet the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) minimum categories for race and ethnicity. This allows for data aggregation when the OMB standard is necessary, ONC explained.”
“Similarly, health IT certified to ONC’s “demographics” criterion must be able to “perform the roll up from races and ethnicities to the OMB categories,” ONC wrote.”
“The technology must also be capable of coding multiple races and ethnicities for a patient in the EHR. This allows individuals to report their race and ethnicity in a manner that most closely aligns to how they self-identify, ONC noted (i.e. Japanese-Indian as opposed to Asian American).”
“ONC called for healthcare providers to work with their health IT developer to implement a strategy for recording race and ethnicity that best supports the populations they serve…” Read the full article here.
Source: ONC Defines EHR Certification For SDOH Data To Pursue Health Equity — By Hannah Nelson, May 21, 2021. EHR Intelligence.
