Coalition offers doctors help with EMRs

The AMA and 13 medical specialty societies have formed a coalition to help physicians adopt and learn more about electronic medical records software systems.

The goal of the Physicians Electronic Health Record Coalition is to aid doctors, primarily those in small- to medium-sized practices, to select and use EMRs that are affordable, suit their needs and can interoperate with other information systems, enabling physicians to easily exchange data with their trading partners.

Because PEHRC is so new -- it was announced on July 22, one day after the Dept. of Health and Human Services laid out a road map for creating a national health care information infrastructure -- it hasn't had time yet to work out how it will accomplish its mission, said AMA Trustee Joseph M. Heyman, MD.

PEHRC expects to hammer out a detailed agenda within six to 12 months, said David C. Kibbe, MD, co-chair of the coalition. Dr. Kibbe is director of the Center for Health Information Technology at the American Academy of Family Physicians.

In addition to the AMA and AAFP, the coalition's founders are the American College of Physicians, American Academy of Neurology, American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Cardiology, American College of Emergency Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians, American College of Rheumatology, American Osteopathic Assn., American Psychiatric Assn. and American Urological Assn.

"There is a collective awareness on the part of medical societies that their members are very interested in the acquisition and use of electronic health records, but that significant barriers still exist to that acquisition and use," Dr. Kibbe said. The desire to help members overcome those barriers, adopt EMRs that work and address doctors' needs led them to establish the coalition, he said. The desire to speak with a unified voice on EMRs and ensure that the vendors develop high-quality, affordable products also led the medical societies to join forces.

"We want to be sure that we're there protecting physicians and ... that [EMRs] that are developed don't end up interfering with their workflow, making them more inefficient and not improving patient safety," said Dr. Heyman, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Amesbury, Mass.

In a separate but related development, three industry groups on July 21 launched an initiative to develop voluntary certification criteria for ambulatory EMRs.

The Chicago-based trio, which represents technology companies, hospitals, medical records managers and insurers, will reach out to medical societies, the federal government and others in the industry to craft criteria to enable physicians to compare EMR products, said H. Stephen Lieber, president and CEO of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. The American Health Information Management Assn. and the National Alliance for Health Information Technology are also sponsoring the initiative.

PEHRC already has spoken with those groups and will participate in the development of the certification criteria, Dr. Kibbe said. Those criteria will set a minimum certification threshold that vendor products must meet, he and Lieber said. The goal is to provide physicians with a way to do a baseline comparison of EMRs rather than serve as a gold seal of approval for specific vendors, they said.

Vendors will have to pay for the cost of testing and certification, which will be contracted out to a testing agency, Lieber added.