Electronic Health Reporter

By Stephanie Jamison (Greenway Health), Chair, EHR Association Executive Committee

It’s been 20 years since 21 of the industry’s leading EHR vendors came together to create the HIMSS EHR Vendor Association in 2004 to accelerate the widespread adoption of EHRs. The new association was also tasked with helping HIMSS establish its strategic direction and official positions on issues related to the EHR and providing input and feedback on the certification process established by CCHIT.

Now called the EHR Association, what started as a bold concept is still going strong in 2024 with a current membership base of 29 companies: competitors working collaboratively to advance health data interoperability, safely embrace new technologies, and improve the quality and efficiency of care. Our initial focus on furthering the initiatives laid out in the Health IT Strategic Framework, released in July 2004 by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (now known as the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, or ASTP), has expanded and evolved along with the state and federal regulatory environment.

At the time, founding Chair Charlene Underwood described the establishment of the EHR Association as a historic opportunity to directly impact healthcare delivery in the US, noting in the press release announcing the new association that “EHR technology has proven its ability to make healthcare safer, more efficient, and more convenient for patients as well as providers.

“As EHR vendors,” she continued, “we have a responsibility to our customers to shape the future of interoperability for effective and secure sharing of patient data, and to the nation to promote the widespread adoption of this life-saving technology.”

Today’s health IT market is vastly different from those early years when hospital EHR adoption was 9% and office-based physician practice adoption was 17%. Now, well over 96% of hospitals and 78% of physicians use an EHR, most of which are certified through the ASTP-driven process. In the years since its establishment, many of the EHR Association’s founding member companies have gone through acquisitions or mergers, and new entrants have stepped up.

The Developer’s Voice

The Association’s record of accomplishments since 2004 reflects the health IT market’s evolution. Over the years, we’ve worked to ensure our members’ voices were heard on regulatory and policy issues of critical importance to both EHR developers and the providers using our technologies. We’ve met with policymakers and submitted comments on everything from meaningful use and standards development to the Nationwide Health Information Exchange and TEFCA to the 21^st Century Cures Act and, most recently, HTI-1 and HTI-2.

Our efforts weren’t limited to offering recommendations and feedback, however. We’ve held numerous Congressional Briefings over the years, focusing on issues such as the role of EHRs in value-based care and the 21st Century Cures Act, as well as COVID-19 and health IT, information blocking, and social determinants of health and health equity.

We’ve also leveraged our collective expertise to provide member companies with tools to navigate a tumultuous regulatory landscape. This includes publishing the industry’s first EHR Developer Code of Conduct reflecting our members’ commitment to supporting safe healthcare delivery, fostering continued innovation, and operating with high integrity in the market—a commitment we maintain to this day.

Social Initiatives

The Association has also found ways to use our collective expertise and experience to support social needs. We were barely a year old when we joined forces with HL7 and HIMSS for disaster response efforts following Hurricane Katrina. The goal was “to alleviate the tremendous loss of healthcare information by the patients and providers of the Gulf region affected by the hurricanes in the fall of 2005,” with the Association designing and profiling an emergency HIE with low barriers to entry for extraction of summary clinical information from local EHRs.

We later lent our support as an implementation partner of text4baby, a free health text messaging service that provided information to pregnant women and new mothers.

The EHR Association also targeted the nation’s opioid crisis with numerous activities, including the publication of Opioid Tapering Implementation Guide for EHRs. Before that, in 2019, we joined the ECRI Institute’s Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety to create guidance for safer opioid prescribing through EHRs, published CDC Opioid Guideline – Implementation Guide for Electronic Health Records, and held a Congressional Briefing on the national crisis.

Today’s EHR Association

Like the industry we serve, the EHR Association itself has evolved in tandem with our collective technologies. We continue our mission to improve the quality and efficiency of care with innovative, interoperable health IT adoption and use through the efforts of nine workgroups and four task forces, each dedicated to a unique aspect of health IT regulation, adoption, and/or utilization. Most recently, we added workstreams specific to artificial intelligence and privacy and consent management, reflecting changing dynamics in the health IT policy environment.

The EHR Association has accomplished a great deal over the past two decades, and our members’ passion for the work remains even as the scope of both requirements and opportunities grows each year. Please join us as we celebrate 20 years of achievements and look ahead to another 20 years of accomplishments on behalf of our diverse membership.