Governmental agencies release electronic health records standards

Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health released two regulations that provided the definition of “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHRs) as well as the standards to improve the efficiency of health information technology used nationwide by hospitals and physicians. The regulations will go into effect 30 days after being published in the Federal Register, and the public will have a 60-day comment period.

An article published in HealthLeaders Media last week further explains the December 30, 2009 announcement. The Department of Health and Human Services was given through the end of 2009 to create a set of standards regarding EHR technology by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Essentially, the standards give some structure to collecting, sharing, and using electronic data contained in EHRs. There was also careful consideration given to patient privacy rights. You can read the full article by clicking here.

In related news, the National Quality Forum (NQF) released a set of 70 measures that encourage incremental use of electronic data to improve quality. There are three tiers of the measures:

• Level one measures include from one electronic administrative source (claims data)
• Level two measures include merged data from multiple administrative sources (claims data)
• Level three measures include data from common electronic data sources

To read more about the NQF’s measures, and the process the committee in charge of creating them went through, click here.

Although this may not directly affect your job in patient safety, do you see these rules as having a larger effect on your organization?