The fall PCC, QRPH, and ITI technical committee meetings were held in Oak Brook in mid November, as usual. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the October planning committee meetings - neither in person or via telecommute due to other committments, however I was able to catch up with what is going on by attending in person for the November meetings. I attended mostly PCC, and sat in on a few QRPH sessions. Here is a quick update on PCC Activities.
Profile Work
In PCC we are going to have a quiet year, with only one profile work item, and this work item is to update an existing profile: Dynamic Care Team Managment (DCTM) to include some additional FHIR-based guidance. Tune in for the calls being scheduled now if you want to learn more.
As I understand it there has also been some discussion on CDA harminozation, but there are no formal CDA harmonization work efforts on PCC’s plate for this upcoming cycle. This is a topic that has been discussed in previous years, but only mediocre progress has been made. Perhaps with efforts like Project Gemini there is hope to re-ignite some of this work.
Change Proposal Work
PCC received a sizeable number of CPs last year (2017), and have been slowly working through processing these. This work will continue with the goal for this next work cycle to have all of these CPs closed out.
Based on a quick count here is our CP submission by year:
| Year | Number of CPs Submitted |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 6 |
| 2017 | 37 |
| 2016 | 9 |
| 2015 | 12 |
| 2014 | 18 |
| 2013 | 43 |
| 2012 | 20 |
| 2011 | 30 |
| 2010 | 15 |
| 2009 | 5 |
| <= 2008 | 77 |
| TOTAL | 272 |
While 2017 was not our largest CP submission year, it is still significant. We have 13 CPs that remain in “Assigned” status, which means that someone is reviewing and finalizing for inclusion in a ballot. If those CPs make it to ballot and pass, then they will be incorporated into the appropriate published document (e.g., Technical Framwork, Profile, National Extension, Appendix).
PCC Committee Structure
The PCC Planning and PCC Technical committees have made a decision to combine into a single planning/technical committee, at least for the next work cycle. This is to streamline the work of PCC given the lower number of participants. Fortunately we do have 3 co-chairs (one of whom is acting more as a “co-chair emeritus”, providing expert guidance to our two new co-chairs.) This is completely within the bounds of the IHE Governance, so no issues on that front. In future years we may split back into separate planning and technical committees if appropriate.
PCC Publication Cycle
We also discussed, and are interested in the idea of supporting a year-round profile publication process. This is something that has been discussed in previous years, but due to high volume of profile publication (and other reasons) it has not yet been possible to achieve. ITI is also interested in this idea and has started a wiki page with a great deal of detail. I encourage you to read this and comment on the wiki page if you have additional ideas to include. As part of this effort IHE may also need to look at it’s back end publication processes and explore opportunities to move away from pdf-based publication.
Summary
PCC has it’s work items outlined for this upcoming cycle, and an opportunity to explore what a new/different publication cycle might look like. While there are not a great number of profiles being published this year (only one, in fact, and it’s “just an update” at that), this doesn’t necessarily signify distress for PCC, rather it could indicate the market is still working on catching up with many of the profiles that PCC has published over the past several years.