Health Technology Leader Describes What Lies Ahead

Elect ron ic h e a l t h r e c o r d s are around the corner. Learn about what is happening in this and other areas of healt h information technology and how it will impact you by attending a series of sessions at APA's 2007 annual meeting led by psychiatrist Robert Kolodner, M.D., APA's Corresponding Committee on Electronic Health Records, and APA's Department on Quality Improvement and Psychiatric Services.

Kolodner is the interim national coordinator for health information technology in the Department of Health and Human Services. He will present the lecture “Moving National Health Information Technology Agenda Forward” on Tuesday, May 22, from noon to 1:30 p.m. in room 26 A/B, Upper Level, San Diego Convention Center.

The Office of the National Coordinator oversees a variety of national projects including electronic health record (EHR) technical standards, software certification, security, and privacy (Psychiatric News, January 5). Kolodner has been involved in over-seeing, promoting, and guiding health information technology initiatives in the VA for many years. According to various government agencies and health care experts, health information technology, including EHRs, has great potential to improve health care quality, improve communication and care coordination, and prevent medical errors.

Kolodner will discuss the activities and plans of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology; provide a psychiatrist's perspective on the national vision and direction for health information technology; outline benefits of HIT for psychiatry, such as improved communication with other providers and automated medication interaction checking; and comment on some of the key concerns that psychiatrists and other physicians have about HIT, including privacy protection of electronic health information, cost and training burden to physicians, and disruption of clinical work flow.

In addition, APA's Corresponding Committee on Electronic Health Records and Department on Quality Improvement and Psychiatric Services are sponsoring two health information technology activities at the annual meeting and will delve more deeply into some of the issues that Kolodner will cover. The first is a workshop on the fast-moving shift from paper to electronic health records,“ The National Health Information Network and Psychiatry: How Will EHRs Impact Our Patients and Our Practice?” It will be held on Tuesday, May 22, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in Room 30 B, Upper Level, San Diego Convention Center.

Second, to showcase the benefits of EHRs and to provide a means for meeting attendees to compare how different products shown in the Exhibit Hall handle the same information, the committee has developed a demonstration scenario that will be distributed to EHR vendors in advance of the meeting. This scenario, as well as a list of vendors, will be available on the committee's Web site at<www.psych.org/members/ehr>.▪