This Outreach and Education webinar for participants in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program and the Medicare and Medicaid Promoting Interoperability Programs (previously known as the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs) is scheduled for Wednesday, September 26, 2018.

The recent news from CMS is that the “Meaningful Use” program, which was part of a large government effort to promote the use of Electric Health Record (EHR) systems, is being renamed to the “Promoting Interoperability” program.

Electronic health record (EHR) systems can improve patient care by making it easier to collect, share, and interpret patient data. However, variations in EHR system design, functionality, and ability to exchange data accurately (interoperability) can cause preventable patient safety risks. The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee (CLIAC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has raised concerns regarding the usability and interoperability of laboratory data in EHR systems. In response, in July 2012, CDC convened the Communication in Informatics Workgroup.

The usability (or lack thereof) of Healthcare IT has been in the news a lot again.

This time a research report published by JAMA (Howe JL ; Adams KT ; Hettinger AZ; et al. Electronic health record usability issues and potential contribution to patient harm. JAMA. 2018; 319: 1276-1278) researchers analyzed voluntary error reports associated with Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems and found that problems with EHR usability may have directly resulted in patient harm.

ONC Usability Change Package Resource & Webinar Recording

ONC hosted a webinar on March 1 that previewed a new ONC-sponsored resource, the Usability Change Package (UCP.) This resource helps health IT end users in hospital settings identify usability challenges, adapt their systems to improve the usability of their systems, and assess the impact of these system changes.

ONC will be hosting a webinar that previews a new ONC-sponsored resource, the Usability Change Package (UCP). The UCP helps health IT end users in hospital settings identify usability challenges, adapt their systems to improve the usability of their systems, and assess the impact of these system changes.

This resource will be made available in the future on the Health IT Playbook. Presenters will provide an overview of the UCP, the process used to develop it, and the gaps and future considerations that were uncovered during development.

Analogies have been a major part of how we explain usability, user experience and/or design thinking to audiences and clients (and potential clients). Many of these analogies involve automotive technology ( see e.g. Crash-test dummies and the Usability of EHRs http://www.theusabilitypeople.com/thought_leadership/crash-test-dummies-... ).

The first Health Datapalooza of the Trump era was pretty reassuring for people in the health IT community:

Those feelings of relief are mostly down to HHS Secretary Tom Price. The primary takeaway is Price’s commitment to simplify reporting and usability burdens in EHRs.

“The promise of health IT is so great, but we must recognize that a one-size-fits-all, inflexible system for our nation’s patients and physicians simply will not work,” he said, adding that physicians were taking too much time “tapping on screens and keyboards rather than helping patients.”