Telligen’s Stan Rankins, Integration Architect, is running for the 2022 co-chair position of HL7’s Clinical Quality Information (CQI) work group. Voting is open to HL7 individual members and organizational representatives who were subscribed to the relevant Listserv by June 24, 2021.

Talk to any health IT expert and you’ll hear the words HL7 FHIR. Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) is the latest standard from HIT industry-leader, HL7. Health Level Seven International (HL7) is the leading standards development body in health IT that creates comprehensive frameworks for exchanging electronic health information.

The HL7 FHIR standard holds the potential for seamless exchange of healthcare information, or interoperability. Standards, in the context of health IT, refer to agreed-upon methods and terminology related to data transport, data format and structure, and the meanings of codes and terms.

This uniform standard will enable systems to connect and exchange information with one another, even if they were developed by different manufacturers (think EHRs). Another bonus? Its ability to pair with several corny puns (see below).

Stan Rankins is FHIR’d Up

Stan Rankins, Integration Architect, is running for a co-chair spot on HL7’s clinical quality information work group. The CQI work group develops and maintains HL7 standards and works with external stakeholders to harmonize and advance interoperability standards to improve healthcare quality.

“Right now, hospital quality reporting is both complex and rapidly evolving,” says Stan. “Being an active participant in communities, such as HL7 and NQF’s technical expert panel, will help engage with stakeholders using and delivering these solutions.”

Throughout his 17-years at Telligen, Stan has watched the quality measurement landscape evolve from reporting chart-abstracted measures to incentivizing providers to meaningfully use EHRs, to legacy & FHIR-based standards for eCQMs.

Stan began his career at Telligen in 2003 on utilization and case review projects. In 2005, he moved to anew project developing the specifications manual for hospital quality reporting under the succinctly tilted, Reporting Hospital Quality Data for Annual Payment Update (RHQDAPU) initiative.

The initiative introduced him to the world of health IT and standards, began working toward a degree in Management Information Systems. By 2007, he  was supporting multiple Telligen quality measurement and reporting projects  and applying IT standards such as HL7 v2 and v3, FHIR and X12.

Today Stan is working towards his Master of Information Studies , which he plans to finish in 2022. In his current role as Integration Architect, he uses his HL7 expertise to support Telligen health IT projects including:

  • Measure Authoring Tool (MAT) & Bonnie Tool: Clinical and technical end-user support for CMS web-based tools for authoring and testing eCQMs
  • Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) and Primary Care First: eCQM subject matter expertise for CMS Innovation Models testing primary care delivery reform

Related: Stan on FHIR and the future of digital reporting