Newswise — With this week's expected announcement of the first group of Electronic Health Record (EHR) products to pass the CCHIT certification process, EHRVA recognizes this achievement and calls on industry stakeholders to do more to accelerate EHR adoption.
"EHRVA works to encourage the widespread adoption of EHR solutions for the significant value they provide to patients, providers, purchasers and payers," said Charlene Underwood, EHRVA Chair and Director, Government and Industry Relations for Siemens Medical Solutions. "We support independent, private-sector product certification as one mechanism that improves adoption by making it easier for providers to compare and purchase both certified and non-certified products."
While supportive of certification, many EHR vendors believe the healthcare industry needs to take steps beyond certification, such as providing incentives for the use of products and finalizing crucial standards to enable interoperability, to truly accelerate provider acceptance and adoption of EHR solutions.
EHRVA members have focused dozens of subject matter experts, including many clinicians, and thousands of hours on CCHIT's criteria development process. In addition to vendor representation on the certification commission by Andrew Ury, MD, EHRVA Vice Chair and CEO of Practice Partner, the association has contributed detailed reviews and recommendations on draft documents. EHRVA intends to continue a high level of engagement as the ambulatory criteria are revised and inpatient and infrastructure criteria are developed for the first time.
EHRVA is committed to an ongoing collaboration with CCHIT to establish certification requirements and to ensure a continuously transparent, equitable and effective process for those vendors who choose to participate.
EHRVA's involvement in accelerating EHR adoption includes contributing its draft Interoperability Roadmap to the healthcare community, engaging in healthcare IT standards forums such as the Health IT Standards Panel (HITSP), and participating in the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) process, to prove that interoperability solutions can be implemented in the real world using existing products.
The EHRVA executive team, including Charlene Underwood and Dr. Ury, are available for media comment following the scheduled July 18th CCHIT announcement of the first certified vendors.
About HIMSS EHRVAHIMSS Electronic Health Record Vendors Association (EHRVA) is a trade association of EHR vendors that joined together to lead the HIT industry in the accelerated adoption of electronic health records in hospital and ambulatory care settings in the US. Representing an estimated 90% of the installed EHR systems in the US, the association provides a forum for the vendor community to speak with a unified voice relative to standards development, the EHR certification process, interoperability, performance and quality measures, and other EHR issues as they become subject to increasing government, insurance and provider driven initiatives and requests. Membership is open to HIMSS corporate members with legally formed companies designing, developing and marketing their own commercially available EHRs with installations in the USA. The association, comprised of approximately 40 member companies, is a partner of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and operates as an organizational unit within HIMSS. For more information, visit http://www.himssehrva.org.
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