Senate committee forms EHR working group

Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Patty Murray (D.-Wash.) announced a bipartisan, full committee working group to identify ways to improve EHRs. Establishment of the working group was mentioned during a recent Senate hearing.

“After $28 billion in taxpayer dollars spent subsidizing electronic health records, doctors don’t like these electronic medical record systems and say they disrupt workflow, interrupt the doctor-patient relationship and haven’t been worth the effort,” said Alexander, in a release. “The goal of this working group is to identify the five or six things we can do to help make the failed promise of electronic health records something that physicians and providers look forward to instead of something they endure.”

“As we focus on making our healthcare system work better for families, electronic health records could not be more important,” said Murray. “Having more and better information can make all the difference for patients."

The announcement outlined the following goals of the working group:

• Help doctors and hospitals improve quality of care and patient safety;
• Facilitate information exchange between different electronic record vendors and different health professionals—interoperability;
• Empower patients to engage in their own healthcare through convenient, user-friendly access to their personal health information;
• Leverage health IT capabilities to improve patient safety;
• Protect patient privacy and security of health information.

The staff meetings will include participation from a range of health IT users and developers and other experts in health IT.