sEHR – The “Super” Set of all Electronic Healthcare Records
The National Alliance for Health Information Technology has defined the terms EHR, EMR and PHR as follows:
Electronic Health Record (EHR)
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be created, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff, across more than one health care organization.
Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that can be created, gathered, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff within one health care organization.
Personal Health Record (PHR)
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be drawn from multiple sources while being managed, shared, and controlled by the individual.
Many have addressed the challenges of migrating from EMR to EHR. Refer to EHR2.0 by Vince Kuraitis JD, MBA for a very concise and insightful summary of the issues surrounding EMR.
I am taking the liberty define the entire collection of health records as sEHR (“super” EHR). A very simple way to look at this is depicted in the adjoining figure:
PHRs are records of individuals which may overlap with EMRs, which are records of healthcare providers. sEHR is the sum total of all of these – one can only imagine the technical, logistics, security, and collaborations issues with managing sEHR. The key item to note is that there are millions and millions of PHRs, thousands and thousands of EMRs, and sEHR. If international standards are established, it is conceivable to have one universal sEHR system, but that may be unrealistic. Establishing sEHR is crucial to achieve interoperability, and it it can be achieved in the U.S., it will be most gratifying.
Subbu,
Discussion of interrelationships among EMR, PHR, EHR is a good one to have. There is no industry consensus or common understanding.
Isn’t eEHR redundant, though? “electronic electronic health record”?
I love the graphic representation, but wonder why there is more than 1 PHR? SHouldn’t that be one record controlled by the patient as, for ex Health Vault or Google Health?
The different PHRs simply indicate that multiple formats may co-exist such as the ones you mentioned. Good observation.
Great Post.
You mind find this helpful.
The Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs will provide incentive payments to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) as they adopt, implement, upgrade or demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR technology. Under this program Eligible Professionals will be paid incentives for upgrading to an Electronic Health Record program before 2015. Beginning in 2015, doctors will be penalized in the form of reduced Medicare payments. The incentive program differs Medicare is federally run by CMS and Medicaid incentive program is run by States and is voluntary.
Let a Nortec Rep explain the benefits avail for you practice.
Visit http://www.NortecEHR.com to learn more on the $44,000 Government Incentives Avail.