Dive Brief:
- The chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP), Lamar Alexander, and ranking member Patty Murray announced this week they are creating a bipartisan working group to examine how to improve usability of electronic health records.
- "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," Alexander said in a prepared statement.
- The working group will attempt to identify a list of tasks to accomplish to make the potential of EHRs something that providers look forward to rather than something they endure, Alexander said.
Dive Insight:
As usual, the question now will be whether this new Senate health committee working group can affect any meaningful change. Their specific goals are outlined as the following:
- to help doctors and hospitals improve quality of care and patient safety
- to facilitate interoperability
- to empower patients to engage in their own healthcare through convenient, user-friendly access to their personal health information
- to leverage health information technology capabilities to improve patient safety
- to protect patient privacy and security of health information
The bipartisan group invites all members of the Senate health committee to participate and will include participation from healthcare and IT professionals.