CHICAGO (February 26, 2013) — The Electronic Health Record Association (EHR Association), an organization of 40 electronic health record (EHR) companies has released its white paper, Practical Guidance to Implement Meaningful Use Stage 2 Secure Health Transport for Certification and Meaningful Use (available on the Association’s website at: http://www.himssehra.org/docs/EHRAStage2SecureHealthTransportCertificationandMeaningfulUse.pdf, developed to help health IT developers and provider organizations alike meet certification and meaningful use requirements as specified in the CMS and ONC Meaningful Use Stage 2 final rules. Charles Parisot, Manager, Standards and Testing, GE Healthcare, and chair of the Association’s Standards and Interoperability Workgroup, led the effort to develop the white paper. “This was a great collaboration among workgroup members, bringing together the perspectives and experiences of experts from several companies,” Parisot said.
In the course of their analysis, the Association leveraged informative material produced by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), and interacted with ONC specialists on specific interpretations to ensure clarity of this Guidance. Parisot went on to say, “We wanted to carefully analyze the regulations and explain the flexibility available to EHR vendors in achieving certification, as well as assisting our customers in leveraging this regulatory flexibility in order to increase the numbers who successfully attest to this component of the meaningful use criteria and, more generally, achieve effective interoperability and exchange.”
Michele (Mickey) McGlynn (Siemens), the Association’s Chairperson added, “This white paper will provide invaluable information to our peers across the EHR industry, as well as our customers who are striving to meet the Stage 2 requirements for secure transport of clinical data. The information will help to drive successful implementation of this objective and measure, and more broadly, drive interoperability which is one of our top priorities,” Ms. McGlynn concluded.
About the EHR Association
The EHR Association is a trade association of 40 electronic health record (EHR) companies that join together to lead the health IT industry in the accelerated adoption of electronic health records in hospital and ambulatory care settings in the US. The Association provides a leadership forum for the EHR software developer community to speak with a unified voice relative to standards development, the EHR certification process, interoperability, performance and quality measures, patient safety, usability, and other EHR issues as they become subject to increasing government, insurance and provider-driven initiatives and requests. The Association is a partner of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and operates as an independent organizational unit within HIMSS. Membership is open to HIMSS Corporate Member companies that design, develop and market their own EHRs. For more information, visit http://www.himssEHRA.org.
