Healthcare IT News: “The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s EHR Usability Task Force has released a white paper focusing on the level of usability in electronic medical records and their implementation at healthcare organizations. “Defining and Testing EMR Usability: Principles and Proposed Methods of EMR Usability Evaluation and Rating” identifies usability of software in an EMR as “one of the major factors and possibly the most important factor hindering widespread adoption of EMRs.” – A copy of the white paper can be found here.
Jul 132009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is an $850 billion stimulus package passed by Congress aimed at encouraging economic growth in various industries through government spending. If you’re in healthcare, then you may be able to take advantage of $51 billion that has been allocated to the healthcare industry, $19 billion of which is aimed at the adoption and implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), also known as Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). The only way to get your share of the money is to demonstrate that you are a “meaningful user” of an EHR system. The problem is figuring out what a “meaningful user” is.
My curiosity about being a “meaningful user” led me to the office of our CIO, where I casually asked him if we were going to qualify for any of the funds allocated by the ARRA. He informed me that “meaningful user” had not been completely defined, and is currently a hot topic of discussion.
