Electronic Health Records Association to Collaborate with iHealth Alliance on Patient Safety Initiatives and EHRevent

This must be the week for EHR Safety Initiatives! SV

CHICAGO (November 7, 2011) – The Electronic Health Records (EHR) Association and the iHealth Alliance (iHA) announced today that they will work collaboratively to support efforts to develop practical, effective, and optimized reporting tools to collect information on medical incidents that may be related to the use of health information technology (IT).


“Obviously, this is an important effort for our Association to support ,” said Sarah Corley, MD, Chief Medical Officer at NextGen Healthcare and Chair of the Association’s Patient Safety Workgroup. “As developers of core technologies that can enhance patient safety and quality care delivery, we want to ensure that we’re part of any initiatives focused on collecting and appropriately analyzing suspected issues that compromise those objectives,” Corley went on to say.


The agreement establishes a basis for collaboration between the two organizations to support the iHA’s online reporting service, EHRevent.org, as well as to ensure that the data being collected by that service is relevant and timely, and to engage with other stakeholders to broaden participation and support of patient safety reporting efforts.


“We’re delighted to be working with the EHR Association on this initiative,” Nancy Dickey, MD, Chair of the iHA said. “The Association and its members bring expertise about these systems that is simply not found elsewhere. In understanding how EHRs are designed and implemented, we’ll be more successful in understanding the root causes of suspected incidents so that they can be prevented in the future,” Dr. Dickey concluded.

The EHR Association, led by its Patient Safety Workgroup under the leadership of Dr. Corley and Vice Chair Rich Landen, Senior Product Manager for Industry Relations at QuadraMed, will also continue to monitor and engage in other activities and organizations that may be working on health IT-related incident reporting.

About the HIMSS EHR Association

The HIMSS EHR Association is a trade association of 44 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 provider community to speak with a unified voice relative to standards development, the EHR certification process, interoperability, performance and quality measures, and other EHR issues as they become subject to increasing government, insurance and provider-driven initiatives and requests. Membership is open to HIMSS Corporate Members companies that design, develop and market their own EHRs. The Association is a partner of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and operates as an independent organizational unit within HIMSS. For more information, visit http://www.himssEHRA.org.

About EHRevent

EHRevent is an online system that allows healthcare providers to report unanticipated events associated with the adoption and use of electronic health records. Founded in 2010 and governed by the not-for-profit iHealth Alliance, EHRevent is operated as a federally sanctioned Patient Safety Organization (“PSO”) which allows safe harbor protections for reporting providehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrs. Network operations for EHRevent are provided by PDR Network LLC. For more information, visit http://www.EHRevent.org.

About the iHealth Alliance

The iHealth Alliance is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to protect the interests of patients and providers as healthcare increasingly adopts electronic systems in patient care. iHealth Alliance board members include senior executives from U.S. medical societies, professional liability carriers, patient safety groups and liaison representatives from the FDA. For more information, visit https://www.ehrevent.org/Mission.html.