By Shari Medina, MD
This month, the FDA issued long-awaited guidelines 
on the agency’s implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act in regards to Clinical Decision Support and the FDA’s intent to exercise enforcement discretion for many types of patient-facing software, mobile applications, and software which have not obtained ONC certification.
(more…)
Posted by EHR Association on December 19, 2017
https://ehrablog.org/2017/12/19/fda-health-it-guidance-is-a-good-start-but-more-clarity-is-needed/
In a speech last month, CMS Administrator Seema Verma expressed her desire for CMS “to focus on patients first.” To do this, she said, “one of our top priorities is to ease regulatory burden that is destroying the doctor-patient relationship. We want doctors to be able to deliver the best quality care to their patients.”
We applaud Administrator Verma for leading this effort to reduce regulatory burdens on healthcare providers. As regulatory requirements for data collection from clinicians directly through the EHR have increased, it has become increasingly more challenging to maintain focus on the data essential to direct patient care. (more…)
Posted by EHR Association on November 3, 2017
https://ehrablog.org/2017/11/03/improving-ehr-usability-by-reducing-regulatory-burdens/
By the EHR Association Executive Committee
Recently, a blog post appeared on the Health Affairs website* painting a gloomy picture of patient access to their electronic health information and suggesting a new theory on how HIPAA can be used to accelerate expansion of interoperability.
Disappointingly, this timely blog post makes inflammatory and inaccurate assertions about EHR vendors, regulatory requirements, and progress made toward interoperable health records. It also seemingly advocates for a “gotcha” system of penalizing potential missteps by providers and developers, which is the wrong approach to encouraging information sharing.
EHR developers provide tools to help our customers care for patients and increase these patients’ access to their health information. The assertion that individuals “struggle to get their information out of EHRs in an electronic format” overstates the situation and does not reflect progress made. Although the extent of exchange is not yet where the healthcare industry collectively would like it to be, interoperability is growing quickly between providers, as well as between providers and patients.
Posted by EHR Association on September 13, 2017
https://ehrablog.org/2017/09/13/to-improve-patient-access-to-data-providers-and-developers-need-clarity-on-regulatory-requirements-not-a-focus-on-compliance-and-penalties/
This week, EHRA submitted comments to ONC regarding the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures) Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement implementation.
You can read EHRA’s recommendations here. Our comments focus primarily on: (more…)
Posted by EHR Association on August 25, 2017
https://ehrablog.org/2017/08/25/interoperability-framework-should-build-upon-existing-technology/
As we generally do with proposed regulations that impact EHR developers and their customers, the Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA) carefully reviewed and collectively commented on CMS’s proposed rule on the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment Systems (HOPPS) and EHR Incentive Program on September 1. Our comments, submitted on September 1 and available here, are based on the collective experiences of more than 30 EHRA member companies who service the vast majority of hospitals and ambulatory care providers using EHRs across the United States.
We put forth two key positions. The first centers around advocating for program alignment across Medicare and Medicaid requirements, as well as the EHR incentive programs with the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). The second states strongly that changes to the EHR incentive program at this late date relative to the current or next reporting period lead to costly and negative repercussions. We strongly recommend that CMS make every effort to incorporate the comments received up to and including this comment cycle in future rulemaking, in order to set appropriate and achievable requirements and deadlines to reduce the need for mid-year revisions.
Posted by ewest123 on September 14, 2016
https://ehrablog.org/2016/09/14/ehra-reiterates-key-recommendations-for-program-alignment-and-practicality-in-comments-on-hopps/
Recognizing the complexity of the MACRA legislation, the Association expressed appreciation that CMS considered a variety of comments from a diverse set of stakeholders in developing the proposed rule. In their detailed comments, they emphasize that some of the complexities in the proposed rule will lead to many significant changes and implications for eligible clinicians. EHRA urged CMS to take every possible step to dramatically simplify requirements in the final rule and to develop provider-focused communications to reduce complexity.
Posted by ewest123 on June 28, 2016
https://ehrablog.org/2016/06/28/ehr-association-responds-to-cms-macramips-proposals/
EHRA Blog 