Are non-English-speaking patients seen as quickly in the emergency department (ED) as English-speaking patients? If not, is this gap limited to certain non-English languages, or is it consistent across all non-English languages? Is this gap consistent on weekdays? Is it more pronounced on weekends?

One of the single greatest social determinants of health is where a patient lives.  It can determine their risk factor for a specific illness or chronic disease, such as asthma, and can also affect much broader measures of well-being and life expectancy. Thus, our ability as healthcare professionals to measure and act on such factors relies heavily on how we accurately capture and manage standardized patient addresses.

As our nation transitions to a digital healthcare system, our stakeholders are discovering new opportunities for using health information technology to advance health care delivery, public health, and research to improve people’s lives. The federal government is no exception in this regard; agencies across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are beginning to leverage the data and capabilities available through electronic health records for a broad range of federal activities and programs, including product safety and surveillance, real world data and real world evidence for regulatory approvals, research, pandemic response, and social service integration, to name just a few.

The Cures Act Final Rule includes regulatory requirements to implement secure, standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs). To support the acceleration of API adoption in health care, ONC has published a series of perspective reports that focus on key stakeholders and their views on APIs.

It’s that time of year again! The annual comment period for the Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) will be open from July 28 – September 30. This is an opportunity for you to provide comments, suggest revisions, and propose additions to the ISA before we publish the 9th Annual ISA Reference Edition in January 2023. Of course, you are welcome to provide comments on the ISA at any time during the year, but please submit your comments by September 30th if you would like your suggestions to be considered as part of the 2023 ISA Reference Edition!