AHIMA Warns About Burden on Rural Hospitals from HHS EHR Proposals

The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) is warning that a number of recommendations in HHS’s draft report Strategy on Reducing Regulatory and Administrative Burden Relating to the Use of Health IT and EHRs could actually increase burdens on rural and/or smaller healthcare facilities. In its draft strategy, HHS laid out a series of recommendations designed to reduce administrative and regulatory burdens that can make health IT infrastructure, such as EHR, cumbersome to use.  “Addressing the challenge of health IT burden and making EHRs useful for patients and providers, as the solutions in this draft report aim to do, will help pave the way for value-based transformation,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar in releasing the draft strategy, a joint effort by ONC and CMS. In its comments on the draft strategy, AHIMA agreed with most of the agencies’ recommendations and the draft strategy’s overall approach to reducing burdens.