Healthcare Usability

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has released certification and meaningful use requirements for electronic health records (EHRs). These require that EHR vendors include evidence of user-centered design and user test results in their certification submission. To be able to obtain the ONC certification (and meaningful use funding) EHR vendors must follow a formal User Centered Design (UCD) process and perform summative usability testing on specific areas of the product.

ONC today released the Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides. These guides are a suite of tools that include checklists and recommended practices designed to help health care providers and the organizations that support them assess and optimize the safety and safe use of EHRs.

OSEHRA Summit 2014

Date: September 3, 2014 (All day) - September 5, 2014 (All day)
Link: http://www.osehra.org
Location:
Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center Bethesda, MD
United States

The Obama administration has signed Accenture to replace CGI Federal as the main IT contractor on the HealthCare.gov health insurance exchange, according to a Jan. 10 Washington Post report. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-administration-to-end-contr...

The deal would have a 12-month term and is estimated at about $90 million, the Post reported.

Excerpts from HealthIT Buzz Blog post by Jacob Reider, MD / Acting National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

Join the ONC, MIT Hacking Medicine, and Tufts MedStart at January 17 Blue Button Codeathon!

Are you a health IT innovator interested in enabling greater patient access to health data?

Beginning on Friday January 17, you can meet and work with other healthcare innovators and develop solutions that can help make a difference in patient and provider relations.

Date and time: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 3:00 pm
Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00)

Join the Next eHealth Provider Webinar on January 14 to Learn How You Can Prepare for Stage 2

Are you participating in the EHR Incentive Programs? Have you completed two or more years of Stage 1? If so, it’s time to start preparing for Stage 2 and earn an incentive for 2014 participation.

Join CMS for the next eHealth provider webinar on Tuesday, January 14th from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. ET to get ready for Stage 2.
What will you learn?

MedcityNews recently posted an article detailing the best EMR companies in the USA. Their webpage seems to lock up in several of our browsers, so we've cut/pasted it here so that you can read it without having technical issues...

Healthcare organizations and physicians are invariably looking to meet regulatory requirements in 2014 in order to be better equipped to deliver accountable care, maximize revenues and improve patient lives.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced that Dr. Karen DeSalvo, who currently serves as the City of New Orleans Health Commissioner and Senior Health Policy Advisor to Mayor Mitch Landrieu, will be the next National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

1. EHR Vendors will have more time to focus on their users.

a. To be able to obtain the ONC certification (and meaningful use funding for their customers) EHR vendors must follow a formal User Centered Design (UCD) process.
b. We recommend that EHR vendors follow ISO-9241-11 and show evidence that their design process is focused upon efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction.

2. EHR vendors will have time to perform many iterations of user testing.

Join ONC on Wednesday, December 18 for a webinar discussion regarding the proposed regulatory timeline for EHR certification criteria for 2015.

Web Conference Information

Conference Line: 888-469-1748
Meeting Number: 243-89

ONC subject matter experts will provide information about the new timeline and then will be available for a question-and-answer session following the presentation.

Agenda

Under the revised timeline, Stage 2 will be extended through 2016 and Stage 3 will begin in 2017 for those providers that have completed at least two years in Stage 2. The goal of this change is two-fold: first, to allow CMS and ONC to focus efforts on the successful implementation of the enhanced patient engagement, interoperability and health information exchange requirements in Stage 2; and second, to utilize data from Stage 2 participation to inform policy decisions for Stage 3.

NEW YORK, December 6, 2013 – WCH’ Service Bureau’s iSmart EHR has been tested and certified under the Drummond Group's Electronic Health Records Office of the National Coordinator Authorized Certification Body (ONC-ACB) program. This EHR software is compliant in accordance with the criteria adopted by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has issued a four-page guidance sheet to aid eligible professionals in meeting Stage 2 meaningful use requirements covering a summary of care, clinical summary and patient electronic access to their medical record.

The document outlines the required data elements and provides additional guidance, according to CMS. “While some of the data elements are common between these three objectives, other data elements are individual to each objective.”

During an event on Monday, officials with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT said changes to Stage 2 of the meaningful use program are unlikely because it would require CMS to embark on a lengthy process of changing regulations, Healthcare IT News reports (Versel, Healthcare IT News, 11/19).
Background

The importance of user-centered design in healthcare is truly life or death. Whether it's new medical devices or technologies; drug research, approval or delivery; patient forms or medical record sharing; emergency disaster planning or increasing the functionality of hospitals and everyday healthcare delivery, everyone is affected in some way by the intersection of usability in healthcare. There are many commonalities, yet each region of the world faces its own set of unique challenges.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology's (ONC) Office of the Chief Privacy Officer (OCPO) has released its first and second web-based security training module, CyberSecure: Your Medical Practice

PubMed Commons is a system that enables researchers to share their opinions about scientific publications. Researchers can comment on any publication indexed by PubMed, and read the comments of others. PubMed Commons is a forum for open and constructive criticism and discussion of scientific issues. It will thrive with high quality interchange from the scientific community. PubMed Commons is currently in a closed pilot testing phase, which means that only invited participants can add and view comments in PubMed.

CMS Changes Name of the EHR Incentive Programs (Meaningful Use) and Advancing Care Information to “Promoting Interoperability”

§170.315(g)(3) Safety-enhanced design

As providers of usability testing and user experience services we know that one of the major advantages of electronic health records (EHRs) are their potential to increase patient safety by preventing, detecting and aiding in the recovery from human errors. ONC has set certification standards for safety-enhanced design (SED), making patient safety a primary focus in the design of an EHR.