Electronic Health Records For Dummies

The role of standards and standards organizations

Every profession has standards, and the healthcare industry makes them a priority to ensure the health and safety of the American public. Now, with the dawn of the EHR age, those standards extend to the realm of health information technology as well. Luckily, some organizations’ sole purpose is to set and monitor health information technology standards.

HIT Policy and Standards Committees

The HIT Policy Committee was created under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) as a result of ARRA to make recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (HIT) regarding development and adoption of a national health IT infrastructure (http://healthIT.hhs.gov/FACAs). In other words, the HIT Policy Committee works to help us all move toward a paperless health IT structure. The committee uses several workgroups to achieve its mission, including workgroups focused on

Meaningful Use

Certification and adoption

Information exchange

National Health Information Network (NHIN)

Privacy and security

Strategic planning

The HIT Standards Committee, which also comes to you courtesy of ARRA and FACA, is in charge of making recommendations to the National Coordinator for HIT about standards, implementation, and criteria for electronic exchange of information. The committee prioritizes policies developed by the policy committee, and employs the following workgroups:

Clinical operations

Clinical quality

Privacy and security ...