Supporting Progress toward an EHR

Acceleration of the EHR throughout healthcare is a collaborative process at the national level and within individual healthcare organizations. At the national level, President Bush has released a Health Information Technology Plan to promote the necessary standards, funding, and leadership to make electronic health records a reality, Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT).

In addition, the industry has seen unprecedented public/private collaboration to remove barriers to progress. AHIMA serves in leadership roles with the National Alliance of Health Information Technology, serving on the Alliance's Board and on work groups in patient safety, electronic health records, and creating a standards inventory database. AHIMA also participates in the Connecting for Health project sponsored by the Markle Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to achieve consensus on healthcare data standards, privacy and security practices, key characteristics and benefits of the personal health record, and a blueprint to move the national change agenda. AHIMA also is a member of the leadership council of the e-health Initiative, which works to shape the policy agenda to advance the quality and safety of patient care through information technology.

AHIMA provided leadership in the development of an EHR draft standard for trial use defined by the Health Level 7 (HL7) EHR Special Interest Group. Through the EHR Collaborative, AHIMA helped orient the industry as the standard developed and gathered valuable feedback to strengthen and shape the standard. AHIMA participates in a number of other HL7 technical committees and special interest groups that define standards.

In addition, AHIMA supports the prompt adoption of ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS as medical code set standards for administrative purposes in the United States and the incorporation of SNOMED-CT as a standard medical terminology throughout electronic medical record systems across all healthcare organizations. We further support the use of a robust map from SNOMED-CT to ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS in order to maximize the value of the clinical data and the benefits of an electronic medical record system.

Finally, AHIMA's position statement on a national health information infrastructure advocates that for the United States' healthcare industry to meet the current and future needs of the nation, a properly funded and maintained national healthcare information infrastructure should be established.

[ About AHIMA | Schools/Jobs | Professional Development | HIM Resources | Foundation | Help | Site Map ]

Copyright © 2008 by the American Health Information Management Association. All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced, reprinted, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the association. All contents, including images and graphics, on this Web site are copyrighted by AHIMA unless otherwise noted. You must obtain permission to reproduce any information, graphics, or images from this site. Permission must also be obtained to link to any of AHIMA's Web sites. To request permission, fill out the AHIMA Permissions Request or contact permissions@ahima.org.