The Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA) (@EHRAssociation), a trade association of companies that provide the vast majority of EHRs to hospitals and physicians across the U.S., announced the results of its annual elections for terms beginning July 1, 2017.
Sasha TerMaat, Director at Epic, was elected to her second one-year term as EHRA Chair; and Richard Loomis, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Practice Fusion, was reelected as EHRA Vice Chair, in addition to being reelected to a two-year term as a member of the Executive Committee.
New to the EHRA Executive Committee is David Heller, Industry and Government Affairs Manager at Greenway Health.
Re-elected to continue their work for two-year terms are Nadeem Dhanani, MD, MPH, Medical Director of Urology at Modernizing Medicine, and Rick Reeves, RPh, Director of Government Relations for Evident, an EHR division of CPSI.
Returning Executive Committee members are Hans Buitendijk, Director of Interoperability and Industry Strategy, Cerner Corporation; Joseph Ganley, Vice President of Federal Government Affairs, McKesson; and Cherie Holmes-Henry, Vice President of Industry Affairs, NextGen Healthcare.
Leigh Burchell, former EHRA Chair and Vice Chair, and Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Allscripts, is moving to an ex-officio role with the Executive Committee. Mark Segal, PhD, EHRA Chair Emeritus and Vice President of Government and Industry Affairs at GE Healthcare Digital; and Carl Dvorak, EHRA Chair Emeritus and President at Epic, continue to serve in ex-officio roles.
Reflecting the balance that EHRA strives to achieve in its leadership to represent both ambulatory-focused and enterprise-focused companies, Dr. Dhanani, Mr. Heller, Ms. Holmes-Henry, and Dr. Loomis fill ambulatory-focused seats. Mr. Buitendijk, Mr. Ganley, Mr. Reeves and Ms. TerMaat fill enterprise-focused seats.
“We are engaged in a number of important initiatives regarding EHR usability and interoperability, so it’s important to have continuity in representing the perspectives of both EHR developers and our collective users,” Ms. TerMaat said. “The entire leadership team brings experience from their efforts with EHRA’s workgroups as well as their professional roles to collaborate on the innovative ways EHRs in the U.S. can improve healthcare and patient experiences.”
Added Dr. Loomis, “EHRA works collaboratively to bring our real-world experiences and technical expertise to speak with a unified voice to help policymakers understand the impact of regulations not only on EHR developers but also on healthcare providers and organizations.”
The Association meets regularly with government officials, healthcare professionals’ societies, and others to ensure that EHRA members and their customers are well represented.
It also provides resources to support best practices in EHR development, such as the recent Interoperability Success Stories, showing the impacts and value of interoperability in operational healthcare settings; and the EHR Design Patterns for Patient Safety, which provides guidelines for the most effective use of display design techniques and elements.
Just last month, EHRA hosted a hands-on Usability Summit. The “Shaping Usability of Health IT” event focused on identifying the various users of an EHR and their specific needs; input from participants is being compiled into a draft that will be open for comment.
About the EHR Association
Established in 2004, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Association is comprised of more than 30 companies that supply the vast majority of EHRs to physicians’ practices and hospitals across the United States. The EHR Association operates on the premise that the rapid, widespread adoption of EHRs will help improve the quality of patient care as well as the productivity and sustainability of the healthcare system as a key enabler of healthcare transformation. The EHR Association and its members are committed to supporting safe healthcare delivery, fostering continued innovation, and operating with high integrity in the market for our users and their patients and families.
The EHR Association is a partner of the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).