AHA has been advocating on behalf of hospitals as the EHR programs and regulations have been developed. In addition to being the voice of hospitals to the government, we are committed to providing useful information from the government offices involved to clarify and ease the challenges of adopting EHRs. Because several government programs and offices are involved (e.g. Medicare, Medicaid, ONC and NIST), we are bringing together on this one web page a wealth of useful information to support your EHR initiatives. The last section on this webpage provides letters and position papers that AHA has developed to advocate for hospitals regarding health information technology. Most importantly, we are providing a Related Resources section to the left with important links to ONC, CMS and other websites where key information can be found for development of your EHR initiative. In addition, the Related Resources section has initiatives that hospitals have undertaken in recent years to develop their HIT capabilities. These are useful to provide a realistic sense of the time, resources and rewards available to hospitals that undertake this effort.

We strongly recommend that you spend time getting to know the information on these website sections. As new information becomes available we will make every effort to highlight it in the News section at the top of the Meaningful Use homepage.

To find out more from AHA policy staff, contact Chantal Worzala at 202-626-2313 or cworzala@aha.org.