A coalition of health care organizations sent a letter to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell recommending that the agency overhaul the meaningful use program with a focus on interoperability, Healthcare IT News reports.

A report compiled by the MITRE Corporation to guide thinking on nationwide interoperability is inadequate and outdated, according co-chairs of a joint federal health IT taskforce, Healthcare IT News reports (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 9/4).

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has outlined three formal requests for congressional action to advance health IT efforts, Healthcare IT News reports (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 9/18).

The American Medical Association released a framework outlining eight priorities for making electronic health records easier for providers to use, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 9/16).

Our Chief Experience Officer, Bennett Lauber, has been invited to participate as a member of the Health IT Policy Committee’s Implementation, Usability, and Safety Workgroup.

The draft charge for the workgroup is:

The Health IT Implementation, Usability, and Safety Workgroup will provide input and make recommendations on policy issues and opportunities for improving how health IT is designed, certified, implemented and used to minimize safety risks and leverage data to support improvements in patient care and health outcomes.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT issued a new final rule on the 2014 certification criteria for electronic health records that offers more flexibility and drops proposed 2015 voluntary criteria,

Safety-Enhanced Design

ONC proposed a “safety-enhanced design” (SED) certification criterion for the Proposed Voluntary Edition that was unchanged as compared to the 2014 Edition certification criterion.

ONC did, however, solicit public comment regarding whether ONC should modify the certification criterion. Specifically, ONC requested comment regarding whether:

PricewaterhouseCoopers announced plans to submit a bid for an $11 billion Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization contract, Healthcare IT News reports (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 9/8).

CMS announced in a final rule that providers and eligible professionals will receive an additional year to upgrade electronic health record systems to meet requirements for Stage 2 of the meaningful use program, Modern Healthcare reports (Tahir, Modern Healthcare, 8/29).

Although electronic health records are widely seen as a way to improve care coordination and boost patient outcomes, they are underutilized in the treatment of some of the individuals who stand to benefit the most: jail inmates.

Apple is in talks with electronic health record provider Allscripts, as well as several hospitals to determine how hospitals could use its cloud-based health information platform known as "HealthKit," Reuters reports (Farr, Reuters, 8/12).

Improving the way hospitals and stakeholders use electronic health records could help to reduce discrepancies in patients' medications at admission and discharge, according to a study by the National Institute for Health Care Reform, Healthcare IT News reports (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 7/29).

The Senate Appropriations Committee in a draft bill requested that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's Health IT Policy Committee submit a report on the barriers to electronic health record interoperability, Health Data Management report

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health
Information Technology (ONC), in conjunction with the Million Hearts Initiative, has launched its newest prize challenge, EHR Innovations for Improving Hypertension!

In Phase 1, the challenge seeks to identify the practices that have used clinical decision support to implement the most successful evidence-based blood pressure treatment protocols. ONC will then reward organizations that can spread these tools for use by the most providers in Phase 2.

Medical experts told members of Congress that health IT solutions, such as electronic health records, are falling short in efforts to improve patient safety, Healthcare IT News reports (McCann, Healthcare IT News, 7/18).

The HIMSS EHR Association in a letter urged the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and CMS to quickly issue a final rule regarding 2014 meaningful use reporting requirements and to delay the start of Stage 3 until at least 2018, Healthcare IT News reports (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 7/11).

Several simple steps -- such as implementing a decision-support tool and providing explanations of health insurance industry vocabulary -- could significantly improve the usability of HealthCare.gov, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Los Angeles Times' "Science Now" reports.

One of the many Holy Grails in health care -- trailing somewhat behind the perennial pursuit of lower costs -- is the notion of interlinking the sometimes disparate components of medical devices, clinical systems, information systems and communication platforms to streamline care and make the entire delivery universe safer for patients.

Last week, ASM Research, an Accenture Federal Services Company, announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs had awarded it a three-year, $162 million contract to improve the VA's existing VistA electronic health record system, Healthcare IT News reports (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 7/4).

Our Chief Experience Officer, Bennett Lauber will be presenting "EHR Usability, The future of medicine is easy to use" at the 3rd Annual OSEHR Conference on Sept 5th at 10:30 am.

OSEHRA, an emerging leader in advancing open source electronic health record software and related health information technology, is bringing together the best and brightest from healthcare and other open source initiatives to share their expertise in three key areas: