News: AHIMA calls for improved health information governance to unify standards for EHR use
October 11, 2012
CDI Strategies - Volume 6, Issue 21
During its 84th national convention, AHIMA called for improved governance for health information to standardize electronic health record (EHR) use and prevent abuse, according to an October 10, 2012 press release from the agency.
Pointing to its history in the field, AHIMA said it has “led the call for uniform interoperable data and information including guidelines for coding standards,” for more than a decade. The association also indicated that it has been lobbying CMS to adopt a national set of coding guidelines for hospital emergency and clinic reporting. (Read a related article in the September 27 edition of CDI Strategies.)
“Recent concerns that EHR implementation could lead to fraud further highlights the need to establish these standards,” the release states. “These standards will address data integrity, patient safety, quality measurement as well as traditional concerns regarding billing fraud.”
“We urge the government to truly investigate the depth of the recently reported problems so we can determine the scope of the issue and take steps to fix it,” said AHIMA CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon, MBA, RHIA, CAE, FACHE, FAHIMA, in the release. “We will continue to ask our members to share the experiences they have with us so we can develop possible solutions.”
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