|
| |
Back to
Industry Activities and Emerging Issues
E-HIM® and Electronic Records
The future state of health information is electronic, patient-centered, comprehensive, longitudinal, accessible and credible. The electronic age brings new variables to an old and complex problem, but the foundation remains the same: health records must be maintained in a manner that follows applicable regulations, accreditation standards, professional practice standards and legal standards.
HIM professionals play a variety of critical roles in the transition from paper to electronic records and the management of electronic content. AHIMA is developing new practice guidelines through the e-HIM® initiative to assist with the transition. There are many important healthcare industry activities focused on the electronic health record. AHIMA strives to bring the HIM perspective to the groups and initiatives we monitor and participate.
The Legal EHR and electronic records management (ERM) is an important initiative as AHIMA and HIM professionals work to promote the need for EHR systems to create, receive, maintain, use and manage the disposition of records for business and evidentiary purposes. HIM professional must partner with clinical, legal, and information technology to address the legal business issues for the health record.
Standards and Industry Activities
AHIMA E-HIM® Workgroups:
The 2003 report “A Vision of the e-HIM® Future” recommended the development and dissemination of best practices specifically to e-HIM®. As a result, AHIMA launched e-HIM® workgroups which brought together industry experts on emerging e-HIM® issues to provide professional guidance to the industry. Each year topics are selected and workgroups formed to advance professional practice guideline for an e-HIM® topic. The deliverables from all of the workgroups since 2003 can be found at www.ahima.org/e-HIM® or in the FORE Body of Knowledge.
New E-HIM® Workgroup Topics Coming in 2008:
- Medical Identity Theft
- Building a Security Schema
- Electronic Content and Records Management
- Health IM in comparison to Health IT
American Health Information Community (AHIC):
The AHIC is a federal advisory body, chartered in 2005 to make recommendations to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on how to accelerate the development and adoption of health information technology. AHIC has seven workgroups which make recommendations and set priorities:
- Chronic Care Workgroup
This workgroup’s charge is to facilitate chronic care monitoring and improved chronic care delivery by making recommendations to deploy widely available, secure technologies solutions for remote monitoring and assessment of patients and for communication between clinicians about patients. Michelle Dougherty, RHIA, CHP, Director, Practice Leadership is a member of the AHIC Chronic Care Workgroup.
This workgroup’s charge is to make recommendations to AHIC regarding the protection of
personal health information in order to secure trust, and support appropriate interoperable
electronic health information exchange. Jill Callahan Dennis, JD, RHIA, Principal, Health Risk
Advantage is a member of the AHIC Confidentiality, Privacy and Security Workgroup.
- Consumer Empowerment Workgroup
This workgroup’s charge is to make recommendations to the AHIC to gain wide spread adoption of a personal health record that is easy-to-use, portable, longitudinal, affordable, and consumer-centered
- Electronic Health Records Workgroup
This workgroup’s charge is to make recommendations to the AHIC on ways to achieve widespread adoption of certified EHRs, minimizing gaps in adoption among providers.
- Personalized Care Workgroup
This workgroup’s charge is to make recommendations to the AHIC for a process to foster a broad, community-based approach to establish a common pathway based on common data standards to facilitate the incorporation of interoperable, clinically useful genetic/genomic information and analytical tools into electronic health records to support clinical decision-making for the clinician and consumer
- Population Health Workgroup
This workgroup’s charge is to make recommendations to the AHIC to facilitate the flow of reliable health information among population health and clinical care systems necessary to protect and improve the public’s health.
- Quality Workgroup
This workgroup’s charge is to make recommendations to the AHIC so that health IT can provide the data needed for the development of quality measures that are useful to patients and others in the health care industry, automate the measurement and reporting of a comprehensive current and future set of quality measures, and accelerate the use of clinical decision support that can improve performance on those quality measures. Also, make recommendations for how performance measures should align with the capabilities and limitations of health IT. Susan Postal, MBA, RHIA, Vice President of HIM at Health Corporation of America (HCA), is a member of the AHIC Quality Workgroup.
Health Information Technology Standards Panel
HITSP’s objective is to achieve widely accepted and readily-implemented consensus-based standards that will enable and support widespread interoperability among healthcare information technology, especially as they would interact in a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) for the United States. HITSP identifies, prioritizes and promotes relevant standards using patient-focused “use-case” scenarios. Standards Harmonization Use Cases focus on the American Health Information Community (AHIC) breakthrough areas to enable interoperability among different information systems, software applications and networks to communicate and exchange information in an accurate, effective, useful and consistent manner. HITSP has the following technical committees: Biosurveillance, Consumer Empowerment, Electronic Health Record, Security and Privacy
Health Level 7 EHR-System Standards
Health Level 7 (HL7) is a HIT standards organization traditionally focused on messaging and exchange of data and documents. The goal of the EHR Technical Committee is to further the HL7 mission of designing standards to support the exchange of information for clinical decisions and treatments, and help lay the groundwork for nationwide interoperability by providing common language parameters that can be used in developing systems that support electronic records.
- EHR-System Functional Standard – ANSI-approved standard which outlines the functional requirements for EHR systems.
- EHR Functional Profiles – Profiles are being developed from the EHR-S functional standard. Profiles are developed for a specific purpose by identifying and tailoring functional requirements and conformance criteria for a specific purpose. Profiles are registered with the HL7 EHR technical committee. The following profiles have been registered or are under development.
- Emergency Department (Registered)
- Legal EHR (Registered June 2007); Balloted as Records Management and Evidentiary Support (December 2007)
- Behavioral Health (Registered) (Balloted December 2007)
- Long Term Care (Under Development)
- Child Health (Under Development) (Balloted December 2007)
- Regulated Clinical Research (Under Development)
- Vital Statistics (Under Development)
Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT)
CCHIT is a certification body for electronic health record systems and their networks. It is an independent, voluntary, private sector initiative. The mission is to accelerate the adoption of health information technology by creating an efficient, credible and sustainable certification program. CCHIT is composed of commissioners from a variety of healthcare stakeholders and consists of work groups for the development and refinement of certification criteria.
2007-2008 CCHIT Workgroups:
- Ambulatory:
The Ambulatory EHR Work Group develops criteria and test scripts for certifying electronic health record (EHR) products used in physician offices - large and small - where most Americans get their care.
- Inpatient:
Tasked with prioritizing and developing criteria and testing for Inpatient EHRs, the Inpatient EHR Work Group monitors the current need for health IT technology used in acute, hospital-based care.
- Network:
Interoperable EHRs require a structure for sharing information—a secure network. With the guidance of the Expert Panels, the Network Work Group is tasked with initiating the development of criteria and tests for these emerging health information exchanges.
- Foundation:
A core set of requirements underlie all EHR products and networks. The Foundation Work Group works with all other Certification Work Groups and Expert Panels, to propose the criteria and tests that belong to that core set.
- Interoperability:
Ensuring that EHR products and networks can share data compatibly is one of the primary goals of certification—and the public and private heath IT communities. The Interoperability Expert Panel works with all CCHIT Work Groups to recommend criteria and testing that ensures data portability.
- Security:
Charged with advising on the security requirements for CCHIT Certified EHRs and networks, the Security Expert Panel remains up-to-date on security standards and best practices to recommend criteria and testing for all EHRs and their networks.
- Child Health:
The care of children spans physician specialty practices and care settings. It's the role of the Child Health Expert Panel to ensure that EHR products and networks address the health IT requirements of caring for this special population by developing criteria and test scripts to be added to other certification categories as an option for certification.
- Cardiovascular Medicine:
The Cardiovascular Expert Panel has been tasked with recommending optional criteria and test scripts to other certification categories to address the unique needs of office-based cardiovascular physicians and practices with a goal of improving health IT adoption in that specialty medicine group.
- Emergency Department:
For this newly created certification category for a special care setting, the Emergency Department Work Group is charged with initiating the development of criteria and test scripts to certify EHR products used to support the treatment of Emergency Department patients.
CCHIT certified ambulatory care and hospital inpatient products in 2007.
Anti-Fraud
Under contract with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) the Foundation of Research and Education (FORE) of AHIMA published two reports on October 17, 2005 detailing how health information technology can address the growing problem of healthcare fraud. Two reports were released:
In 2006–2007 Research Triangle Institute (RTI) received a contract from the Office of the National Coordinator to identify requirements for EHR-S that can help enhance data protections which would prevent fraud† from occurring, as well as detect fraud both prospectively and retrospectively. A key component of the contract was to create recommended requirements that overlap whenever possible with those requirements currently in use for EHR certification. FORE/AHIMA was a subcontractor on this contract. One report was released and is available on the RTI website.
Other Resources and Links:
EHR Resources and Links:
Institute of Medicine Reports
- To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System (November 1999)
- Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century (March 2001)
Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS)
American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)
e-Discovery Resources and Links:
The Sedona Conference® (A Legal Think Tank)
- The Sedona Principles Addressing Electronic Document Production, Second Edition (June, 2007)
- The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Legal Holds, August 2007 Public Comment Version
- The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Email Management (August, 2007)
- The Sedona Conference® Best Practices Commentary on Search and Retrieval Methods (August, 2007)
Enterprise Content and Records Management Resources and Links:
AIIM—The Enterprise Content Management Association
ARMA International—Records Management Association
AHIMA Resources
E-HIM® Practice Briefs
AHIMA commissioned volunteer work groups to develop practice standards for areas that play an integral role in the transition from paper to electronic health records. e-HIM® practice guidelines are available at www.ahima.org/e-HIM®/
Books:
Electronic Health Records: A Practical Guide for Professionals and Organizations, 3rd Edition
By Margret K. Amatayakul, MBA, RHIA, CHPS, CPHIT, CPEHR, FHIMSS
How to Evaluate Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems
By Patricia A. Trites, MPA, CHBC, CPC, EMS, CHCC, CHCO, CHP, CMP(H) and Reed D. Gelzer, MD, MPH, CHCC
The Legal Health Record
By Cheryl E. Servais, MPH, RHIA
Distance Learning—E-HIM® and EHR Courses
- E-HIM®: Analysis of Case Studies
- E-HIM®: Conversational Information Technology
- E-HIM®: Project Management for Information Technology
- Electronic Records Management
- Migration Path to the EHR
- The Legal Record – What You Need to Know
- Healthcare IM: Physician Practice EHR Solutions Program
Journal of AHIMA:
The HIM Impact on EHRs: Newly Released Study Links HIM Professionals and Successful EHR Implementations
By Susan H. Fenton, MBA, RHIA; Margret Amatayakul, MBA, RHIA, CHPS, CPEHR, FHIMSS; and Mitch Work
E-Discovery and HIM: How Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Will Affect HIM Professionals
By Kim Baldwin-Stried, MBA, MJ, RHIA, CPHQ
E-Discovery: Preparing for the Coming Rise in Electronic Discovery Requests
By Chris Dimick
Perspectives in Health Information Management:
By Minal Thakkar and Diane C. Davis, PhD
By C. Andrew Brown, MD, MPH; Jessica H. Bailey, PhD; Margaret E. Miller Davis, MD; Paula Garrett, PhD; and William J. Rudman, PhD
E-HIM® Community of Practice: More than 3000 members have joined this community to network and share resources on HIM issues as they relate to electronic technologies of accessing, processing, storing and transferring health care information.
Enterprise Imaging Community of Practice: Community members share ideas, successes, strategies as well as what to avoid and “how to” type of information related to document imaging and the electronic medical record.
AHIMA members have access to thousands of resources and publications through the Body of Knowledge (BOK). This web based library provides access to Journal of AHIMA articles, Perspective articles, external publications, AHIMA National Convention proceeding papers and more. The BOK has extensive resources on e-HIM® and EHR topics.
|
[ About AHIMA
| Schools/Jobs
| Professional Development
| HIM Resources
| Foundation
| Help
| Site Map
]
|
Copyright © 2010 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. |
| |
Print page
