EMR vs EHR redux

Nate Bagley from Software Advice asked me to review his article and it jogged my memory… I wrote this a few years ago.  Only Nate offers some Google data to back up the idea that essentially an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is a patient’s medical record sourced from one provider; an Electronic Health Record (EHR) is sourced from several providers. This is in line with Nate’s quote from Don Fluckinger, “EHR seems to refer to a record that can be shared back and forth and amended among multiple providers.”

If I get my healthcare from one provider, say Sutter Health, where one electronic record is shared between primary care, nurses and specialists, is that an EHR or EMR?

Until the NHIN or HIEs gain traction, Sutter’s health record cannot be shared with Stanford Hospital literally across the street!

‘Meaningful use’ toward HIEs – questions for Dr David Blumenthal

I read with interest update 3 by Dr David Blumenthal of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Firstly Dr Blumenthal, consistently uses the term EHR (Electronic Health Record).  Per my definition of EHR vs EMR (Electronic Medical Record) an EMR is used by one vendor such as a physician, whereas an EHR is a patient’s collective record of medical data sourced by several healthcare providers.

Questions for Dr Blumenthal:

1. Did you mean that health care providers should implement EMRs,  not EHRs?
2. How will the various EMRs share data between each other (and their regional HIEs/RHIOs )  so that patients can move with ease from provider to provider? Will HITSP provide standards that EMRs can adhere to? Will HL7 be updated?
3. What about medical terminology? Will EMR vendors adhere to LOINC or ICD-10 so that a universal EHR can be created for patients?

Upcoming HIE webinar from Medicity

Register here for a webinar from Medicity, description below:

(Medicity’s HIE blog is here and a description of their Novogrid here)

In the wake of ARRA legislation, the healthcare community is awash in the vision of health information exchange (HIE) – both HIE as the action of exchanging patient information and HIE as an entity such as a RHIO – as they seek to achieve “meaningful use.”  However, the cost, complexity, and viability of health information exchange present a challenge that seems daunting to many constituents in the healthcare industry.

The Medicity approach to HIE focuses on the deployment of incremental, value-added services from the bottom up.  No matter what stage your organization has reached in the HIE planning or implementation process, a fundamental step must be to enable the exchange of health information between acute and ambulatory environments, with as many physician practices as possible. The Medicity Novo Grid technology accomplishes this connectivity rapidly, efficiently and economically.

In this online session, Medicity Vice President, Bill Sims will discuss how “getting on the Grid” solves real-world, practical HIE challenges, overcoming the obstacles created by a community of physician practices whose EMR adoption varies widely and is constantly evolving. Bill has worked directly with hundreds of community hospitals and large health systems to address a wide variety of these technological, regulatory and business issues and will discuss the proven solutions they have utilized.  This webinar will focus on the benefits of the Medicity Novo Grid to achieve immediate and meaningful value for hospitals and physician practices. 

(Forcing?) Adoption of EHRs and doing it right

Interesting discussion I had with Paul Roemer on “The HIE blog”

How do we encourage the adoption of EHRs aside from dangling the ARRA reimbursement carrot in front of the donkey?

Is the process of implementing an EHR any different from a large software project such as SAP or ORACLE?

Join the discussion, here.