Feds seek EHRs for first responders

张琨

<p>Feds seek EHRs for first responders<br />Healthcare IT News <br />By  Caroline Broder, Senior Editor  03/07/06 </p><p>(WASHINGTON) -- The federal government within the next year wants to make electronic health records available to first responders for use in emergency situations, HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt said Tuesday. The move is part of several recommendations from a Hurricane Katrina after-action report. </p><p>Leavitt has asked the American Health Information Community, a federal advisory body, to develop recommendations on ways to create such records. Meanwhile, the Southern Governors’ Association has convened healthcare providers, payers, consumers, business leaders and IT professionals to serve on the Gulf Coast Health Information Task Force. The group, which holds a government contract, will review the necessary standards and policies to support a regional health information organization that would help digitize medical records. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many paper medical records were destroyed. </p><p>AHIC also is creating recommendations on several “breakthrough” projects aimed at accelerating adoption of information technology within the U.S. healthcare system. The group, which met Tuesday in Washington, D.C., will make recommendations within one year on:</p><p>    •     A project to send certain ambulatory and emergency department data in a standardized, de-identified format to public health agencies within 24 hours. The biosurveillance work group is exploring ways to move data through regional health information organizations to public health agencies and build on existing federal biosurveillance efforts. </p><p>    •     A project to encourage widespread use of secure messaging between patients and clinicians. A chronic care improvement group within AHIC is looking at ways to use existing infrastructure to encourage secure messaging. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will seek opportunities to evaluate the impact of secure messaging. </p><p>    •     A project to make a pre-populated, secure electronic registration summary available to certain populations. The patient empowerment work group would make additional recommendations to make a medication history linked to the registration summary widely available within a year.  The consumer empowerment group within AHIC is considering several models to make these summaries available and is examining the potential for use in pediatrics, with patients over age 45 who have a high rate of medication use or by patients in certain geographic locations. </p><p>    •     A project to make standardized, current and historical lab data available for clinical care. An electronic health records work group within AHIC is considering various models to exchange lab data, including through regional health information organizations, peer-to-peer interfaces or Web-based portals. </p><p>The groups are expected to make concrete recommendations on each project at AHIC’s May 16th meeting. </p><p>National Coordinator for Health Information Technology David Brailer, MD, reminded AHIC that its charter does not include making recommendations on fiscal policies surrounding IT adoption. The group is charged with making recommendations, not implementing healthcare IT projects. It will be up to ONCHIT, federal contractors working on healthcare data exchange projects and federal agencies to implement AHIC’s recommendations, Brailer said. He also encouraged AHIC’s workgoups to “separate the difference between fact finding and making recommendations.”</p><p>AHIC is a 17-member public-private sector group charged with advising the federal government on standards and projects that would speed healthcare's adoption of information technology. The group was formally chartered in July 2005 for two years. </p>