The Health IT Standards Committee this week set up a “glide-path” for the adoption of SNOMED CT as the standard clinical vocabulary for electronic heath information healthcare providers must use in order to qualify as meaningful users of health IT under the economic stimulus plan.

The panel, which is advising the Department of Health and Human Services on standards that will define “meaningful use” of health IT, said at its Aug. 20 meeting that providers must adopt SNOMED CT by 2013 in order to meet the test of meaningful use and thus trigger payments under the plan.

SNOMED, the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms, is a comprehensive set of standard terms for clinical information for use in electronic health records. It is considered a requirement for more advanced forms of health information exchange and analysis.

The Committee said providers may continue to use legacy ICD-9 standards in 2011 – the first year payments will be released under the plan – they have relied on for years. The International Classification of Diseases standards were originally developed to standardize terms for medical billing and payment claims.

By 2013, however, providers must use SNOMED CT and by 2015 it must be the sole standard for electronic exchange of clinical information, said Dr. John Halamka, vice chair of the Committee and co-chairman of its clinical operations workgroup. Halamka is also chairman of the Health IT Standards Panel, which selected many of the standards that the committee has recommended.