CHICAGO – The HIMSS Electronic Health Records Association and the iHealth Alliance (iHA) have announced a collaboration aimed at supporting efforts to develop practical, effective and optimized reporting tools to collect information on medical incidents that may be related to the use of health information technology.
[See also: Institute of Medicine report says FDA not fit to regulate HIT.]
"Obviously, this is an important effort for our association to support," said Sarah Corley, MD, chief medical officer at NextGen Healthcare and chair of the association’s Patient Safety Workgroup. "As developers of core technologies that can enhance patient safety and quality care delivery, we want to ensure that we’re part of any initiatives focused on collecting and appropriately analyzing suspected issues that compromise those objectives."
Two organizations will collaborate to support the iHA’s online reporting service, EHRevent.org, helping ensure that data collected by that service is relevant and timely, and engaging with other stakeholders to broaden participation and support of patient safety reporting efforts.
[See also: EHR safety reporting system launched.]
“We’re delighted to be working with the EHR Association on this initiative,” said Nancy Dickey, MD, chair of the iHA. “The association and its members bring expertise about these systems that is simply not found elsewhere. In understanding how EHRs are designed and implemented, we’ll be more successful in understanding the root causes of suspected incidents so that they can be prevented in the future."
The EHR Association, led by its Patient Safety Workgroup under the leadership of Corley and Vice Chair Rich Landen, senior product manager for industry relations at QuadraMed, will also continue to monitor and engage in other activities and organizations that may be working on health IT-related incident reporting.
[See also: Docs stress importance of reporting EHR problems .]
