Welcome to the Health IT Buzz Blog, a service of HHS’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). This blog was created to answer your questions about the nation’s transition to electronic health records and to create a conversation about the challenges and successes health care providers, physicians, practices, and organizations are experiencing as they transition from paper to electronic health records.
Latest Buzz Posts
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Temporary EHR Certification Program and List
A surgeon can’t operate without the proper equipment. A clinician can’t achieve meaningful use of electronic health records without an EHR that is designed to improve patient care and practice efficiency.
The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services announces today a big step in ensuring that clinicians can easily identify EHRs and EHR modules that have the capabilities needed to achieve meaningful use and thereby reap the financial incentives offered by Medicare and Medicaid. The temporary certification program lays out a path by which organizations can become authorized to test and certify EHR products. Certification can give physicians confidence that the EHR product they choose has the capabilities to help their practices achieve meaningful use.
However, it does not mean that choosing an EHR will be a simple decision, or that certification of an EHR guarantees the provider using it will accomplish meaningful use. Certification is another example of how ONC supports the nation’s clinicians in the move towards a fully functional, secure health information exchange system. Combined with the technical advice and support of Regional Extension Centers, certification helps level the playing field and enables practices large and small to make educated choices that will lead to meaningful use.
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Health IT Adoption
Introducing change in health care is never easy. Historically, adopting our most fundamental medical technologies, from the stethoscope to the x-ray, were met with significant doubt and opposition. So it comes as no surprise that in the face of change as transformational as the adoption of health IT – even though it carries the promise of vastly improving the nation’s health care – some hospitals and providers push back. I resisted using EHRs while an internist in Boston, as I wrote in my blog, “Why Be a Meaningful User.” Over time, however, I found that working with health IT made me a better and safer physician. Most importantly, my patients received better, safer care and improved outcomes.
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Health IT Journeys: Share your EHR Implementation Stories
Across the country, in practices large and small, urban and rural, general and specialized, health care providers are beginning their journey towards the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs). Some practices are in the preliminary stages of learning about health IT, while others have already implemented systems and are using them to the benefit of patients.
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ONC Beacon Communities Lead the Charge
Across the nation, in communities large and small, health information technology (health IT) innovators are boldly leading the way toward the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs). Yesterday, we awarded $220 million in Beacon Community cooperative agreements to 15 trailblazing community consortiums that will demonstrate how the meaningful use of electronic health records can serve as a critical foundation for achieving measurable improvement in the quality and efficiency of health care in the United States.
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Why Be a Meaningful User?
As I write, physicians throughout the United States are deciding whether to become meaningful users of electronic health records by 2011 when Medicare and Medicaid start making extra payments to meaningful users. For some the decision may be pretty simple. Almost 200,000 doctors already have adopted EHRs and are using them at a basic or sophisticated level. For these physicians, the journey to meaningful use, and its financial and clinical rewards, may be comparatively short. Many other doctors, however, remain undecided.
