All posts tagged EHRA

Electronic Health Record Association Announces FY23 Leadership and Priorities

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) Association announced the results of its annual Executive Committee elections for terms beginning Jan. 1, 2023. The EHR Association is a trade association of 30 companies that serve most of the nation’s hospitals and ambulatory care organizations using electronic health records (EHRs) and other health information and technology to deliver high-quality, efficient care to their patients.

David Bucciferro, Senior Advisor at Foothold Technology-Radicle Health, was elected Chair of the Executive Committee, which establishes the Association’s guiding principles and develops and implements strategic plans. William Hayes, MD, Chief Medical Officer at CPSI, was elected Vice Chair.

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by EHR Association on January 3, 2023  •  Permalink
Posted in EHRA News
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Posted by EHR Association on January 3, 2023

https://ehrablog.org/2023/01/03/electronic-health-record-association-announces-fy23-leadership-and-priorities/

Putting Policy Before Standards Can Create Serious ePA Roadblocks

By Leigh Burchell (Altera Digital Health), EHRA Public Policy Leadership Workgroup Chair

This is part three in a four-part series examining the need for ePA, the barriers presented by the current environment, necessary capabilities and functionality for progress, and the EHR Association’s policy recommendations. Read part two here. 

There is a strong use case for electronic prior authorization (ePA), given the frustration providers have with the burdensome current processes, and health IT developers recognize the potential that exists for our technologies to assist with making our clients’ lives easier in this area. However, the road to success with ePA will be rocky if it is not broadly rolled out at a pace and with a legal/regulatory cadence that aligns with the ability of stakeholders to deploy and use solutions that follow consistent standards. Therefore, the EHR Association supports the promulgation of ePA requirements only when undertaken in a way that avoids prior policy mistakes of pushing faster than standards development can keep up. 

Rolling out ePrior Authorization will be complex, even moreso than similar efforts at digitization we’ve already accomplished. This complexity stems from the need for change – and adoption of agreed-upon standards – by multiple stakeholders with varying levels of readiness.  For example, it is important to work closely with payers to ensure their readiness for the required bidirectional information flow using standards and to ensure functionality can be sufficiently tested. This also helps avoid a scenario in which payers roll out individual requirements to which EHR developers and providers will have to respond, which would be highly inefficient. 

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by EHR Association on November 16, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in ePA
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Posted by EHR Association on November 16, 2022

https://ehrablog.org/2022/11/16/putting-policy-before-standards-can-create-serious-epa-roadblocks/

“No Surprises Act” Regulations Raise Concerns

By Leigh Burchell (Allscripts), Chair, & Janet Campbell (Epic), Vice Chair,
EHRA Public Policy Leadership Workgroup

The growth in high deductible health plans requiring patients to shoulder more of their healthcare costs and the lack of transparency in healthcare pricing has exacerbated the issue of patients left with surprise medical bills that many cannot afford to pay. The urgent need to address these serious issues is why the EHRA supported the No Surprises Act when it was developed and welcomed the regulations published last year as a foundation upon which it can be implemented. 

However, we have several concerns about rulemaking to date as it relates to workability and the unnecessary burden it creates for industry stakeholders. To that end, we reached out proactively to regulatory agencies to provide feedback in four key areas that we believe – based on our member companies’ experiences and our ongoing advocacy for reasonable timelines and requirements – will be informative when it comes to additional regulatory actions expected later this year. 

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by EHR Association on April 6, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Health IT Regulation, Health IT Standards, Interoperability, Uncategorized
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Posted by EHR Association on April 6, 2022

https://ehrablog.org/2022/04/06/no-surprises-act-regulations-raise-concerns/

The Case for Telehealth Reform

By the EHR Association

The expanded access to telehealth enabled under the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) has been transformational and served to engrain virtual care into the nation’s healthcare landscape – improving access and outcomes. Healthcare providers have risen to the challenge of meeting patients’ expectations for telehealth services by making substantial investments into new technologies that have so far carried them through the pandemic. 

However, despite ongoing surges and the emergence of new variants, many of the telehealth flexibilities that have helped dramatically improve patient access to care will expire later this year unless the Biden Administration extends the COVID-19 PHE  – which must be renewed every 90 days. Should that happen, the impact to public health programs and private healthcare delivery alike will be significant. 

Even if the PHE is extended, the uncertainty generated by its temporary nature is impacting all aspects of healthcare.

Even if the PHE is extended, the uncertainty generated by its temporary nature is impacting all aspects of healthcare. Healthcare organizations must decide if they can risk dedicating finite financial resources to maintaining the technological and clinical infrastructure required to continue offering telehealth programs at the level to which patients are now accustomed, when the possibility exists that Congress may ultimately decide against making the changes allowed under the PHE permanent.

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by EHR Association on February 10, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in COVID-19, Public Policy and Health IT, Telehealth
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Posted by EHR Association on February 10, 2022

https://ehrablog.org/2022/02/10/the-case-for-telehealth-reform/

Congratulations & Thank You

By Barbara Hobbs, Chair, EHRA Membership Committee

The EHRA would not be possible without members – backed by their organizations – who are willing to dedicate time, expertise and other resources needed to work toward our mission of accelerated health IT adoption and interoperability, use of data to improve the efficiency of care delivery and advancing patient outcomes through enhanced quality.

As we move on from 2021, we want to take this opportunity to extend a very special thank you to the volunteers who keep EHRA running. In particular, we’d like to congratulate Barbara Hillock of Harris Healthcare, who was named our 2021 Most Active EHRA Individual Member, and Medsphere, the 2021 Most Active EHRA Member Company.

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by EHR Association on February 10, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in General, Uncategorized
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Posted by EHR Association on February 10, 2022

https://ehrablog.org/2022/02/10/congratulations-thank-you/

New Guide Offers Guidance for Digitizing Opioid Tapering Plans

By Daniel Seltzer, Co-chair of the EHRA Opioid Crisis Task Force

Care disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other ongoing events have put long-term opioid therapy (LTOT) patients at increased risk for opioid-related harm and heightened the urgency around addressing the opioid crisis. This has, in turn, presented a significant opportunity to leverage technology to improve certain care processes around opioid therapy, starting with digitizing the tapering plan and incorporating existing clinical practice guidelines into clinical decision support (CDS) tools. 

These are areas that have been researched extensively by EHRA’s Opioid Crisis Task Force, which was formed in 2018 to explore and recommend ways EHR technology can help solve the complex opioid crisis puzzle. This research culminated in the newly released Opioid Tapering Implementation Guide for Electronic Health Records, a set of clinical practice guidelines that can be operationalized to improve opioid stewardship and opioid tapering in clinical practice. 

EHRA’s goal with this Opioid Tapering Guide is to enable an organization’s health IT team to implement tapering best practices more rapidly using EHR-based CDS tools. The EHR developer community can also use it to steer the future development of new or updated products and services that can help hospitals, physician practices and other care environments implement these and other best practices. 

In developing the guide, the Task Force leveraged evidence-based guidelines on opioid tapering published by several organizations and agencies with subject matter expertise, including clinical recommendations from the United States CDC, VA/DOD, and HHS. These referenced guidelines include tapering plans for pain lasting longer than three months or past the normal tissue healing time frame, outside of active cancer treatment and palliative or end-of-life care. 

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by EHR Association on January 11, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
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Posted by EHR Association on January 11, 2022

https://ehrablog.org/2022/01/11/new-guide-offers-guidance-for-digitizing-opioid-tapering-plans/

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