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 Blog Posts
-
Health Information Exchange: From Standards to Practice
The recent release of the Stage 2 Meaningful Use final rule includes an important requirement: Health care providers should be able to exchange information electronically using his or her electronic health record (EHR). By 2014, a provider attesting to Meaningful Use Stage 2 should be able use their EHR to share an electronic copy of a care summary and relevant documentation with another provider, regardless of which vendor produced the EHR that either is using. In addition, patients should be able to view, download, and transmit their personal health information from an EHR to a personally controlled health record or another provider.
-
Now is the Time for Meaningful Use!
Recognizing the need to strike a balance between the urgency of modernizing our health care system and the pace of change that can be absorbed by providers and health IT vendors, CMS and ONC have implemented the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs in three stages, with each stage adding increased functionality and advanced concepts designed to improve patient care, enhance care coordination, and increase patient and family engagement. Released in July 2010, the final rules for Stage 1 focus on functionalities that support the electronic capture of data and allow patients to receive electronic copies of their own health record.
-
Nurses, “Ask for YOUR e-Health Record!”
As the 2012 National Health IT Week begins, we’d like to call on the 3.2 million registered nurses across the nation and the important roles they serve everyday as caregivers, advocates, educators, and health consumers to take action in their own health. In support of ONC’s Consumer e-Health Program, the Alliance for Nursing Informatics (ANI) and American Nurses Association (ANA) have been working with ONC to engage the nation’s nurses to help patients get more involved in their health and health care by asking them to be more involved patients themselves. In 2011, ANI and ANA joined leaders from the private and public sector and across government at ONC’s inaugural Consumer Health IT Summit event and made pledges in support of ONC’s Consumer Pledge Program. (See full ANI and ANA pledges.)