HIMSS EHRVA represents a community of EHR vendors providing a unique voice to the healthcare industry. Questions are welcome –and every question will be answered by a HIMSS EHRVA member with appropriate expertise in the topic area. All responses are intended as operational rather than definitive.
What is the EHR Vendor Association and how does my organization join?
What are the objectives of EHRVA?
How does EHRVA work with HIMSS?
What is the cost to join EHRVA?
What is the EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap?
How does EHRVA serve market demand with the Roadmap?
Why is EHRVA taking the lead on the industry interoperability roadmap process?
How does EHRVA collaborate within the industry to drive the Roadmap process?
What impact will the Roadmap have on vendors?
How EHRVA expect the Roadmap to be used?
What is the EHR Vendor Association and how does my organization join?
The EHR Vendor Association (EHRVA) is a trade group comprised of vendors who develop, market and support electronic health records software. Our objective is to promote the adoption of EHR systems to support improved efficiency and patient care in the healthcare delivery system. If your organization is a corporate HIMSS member, you can join by completing a Membership Application.
What are the objectives of EHRVA?
As stated in the EHRVA charter, our objective is to form an association of EHR vendors to advance the EHR industry as a whole and promote the rapid adoption of EHR. The widespread adoption of EHR will help improve the quality of patient care and the productivity of the healthcare system. The primary mission of the Association will be to provide a forum for the EHR vendor community relative to any EHR standards development (functionality, interoperability or any others), the proposed EHR certification process, interoperability, performance and quality measures, and other EHR issues that may become the subject of increasing government, insurance and physician association initiatives and requests.
How does EHRVA work with HIMSS?
HIMSS supports EHRVA by providing staff to assist with meetings and conference calls, as well as to provide guidance relative to trade association operations. Since all EHRVA members are also HIMSS corporate members, this support is important to ensure that our activities are coordinated although EHRVA can speak with an independent voice on matters where our positions might differ from HIMSS positions.
What is the cost to join EHRVA?
The only costs involved in joining EHRVA are HIMSS corporate member fees and travel expense for your representatives to participate in 2-3 meetings per year. Most EHRVA activities will be conducted via e-mail and teleconferences.
What is the EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap?
- The EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap supports the national goal of interoperable electronic health records (EHRs) and provides a pragmatic, logical plan that will succeed when adopted and implemented by key stakeholders.
How does EHRVA serve market demand with the Roadmap?
- In the current context there are several potential frameworks for interoperability. In order to move forward, it is in the market’s interests to consolidate these models and select a common path towards interoperability.
- Pragmatic steps to bring together existing plans and define incremental goals reflect a value-based approach to health IT adoption.
Why is EHRVA taking the lead on the industry interoperability roadmap process?
- EHRVA’s strength is in our combination of technical and implementation knowledge –we represent approximately 90% of installed electronic health records and health information systems in the nation. No other group has the resources to bring together a model with the depth and dimension of the Roadmap we propose.
- EHRVA is founded on a collaborative model, meaning that we accommodate multiple viewpoints within all of our processes. Since interoperability is a process more than an end-point, this focus on connecting people and ideas is critical to the success of a viable and evolving Roadmap.
How does EHRVA collaborate within the industry to drive the Roadmap process?
- EHRVA has an established track record of outreach across stakeholder groups within the industry. Through personal invitations and public announcements we are seeking feedback on the content and deliverables of the Roadmap.
- As a partner in National Health IT Week the EHRVA will co-host a roundtable on interoperability with HL7 and IHE who are members of the Interoperability Collaborative. During this session (Monday, June 5) invitees will be asked to provide input on the Roadmap in an open forum setting. From this point, an analysis of agreements of differences between interoperability framework ideals will be presented to the market.
What impact will the Roadmap have on vendors?
- Vendors are integrating the principles of the Roadmap into development plans. We will be ‘rolling up our sleeves’ alongside users of health IT systems to both implement and deliver on the vision.
What do we define as success?
- Interoperability helps the end user – it is for the engagement of our clients
- Gap analysis - produced
- We provide this Roadmap to mobilize the leadership of healthcare organizations, information technology vendors and other relevant stakeholders to collectively deliver on the vision by incorporating this Roadmap into their plans.
Why will we succeed?
- Measure our expectations
- Not saying everyone must have same agreement
- Disagreement is OK and we’re going to point to them
How EHRVA expect the Roadmap to be used?
- Based on proven methods and existing technology, the Roadmap considers a value-based approach that provides immediate benefits and outlines concrete steps to a future state in which the exchange of healthcare information across all care settings is supported in patient-centric manner.
We have a historic opportunity to dramatically improve the delivery of healthcare in this country.
-Charlene Underwood, Siemens Medical Solutions and HIMSS EHRVA member
