The Year EHRs Became 'Real'

By Jim Tate, President, EMR Advocate

It came out of the blue. It slipped in the back door when no one was looking. There was no time for the nobles and princes in the marble halls of Washington to make a deal or slip in a poison pill. In the winter of 2009, in the midst of the greatest economic crisis in more than 50 years, funding was approved to stimulate and support a massive rollout of HIT (health information technology). The EHRs were coming and they would not be stopped. In normal times the legislated funding that was to provide education, support, infrastructure, and direct incentives would never have seen the light of day. But these were not normal times. The financial fear and uncertainty that rocked the world in those days made possible the impossible. Tectonic shifts sometimes occur, and this was one of those times. The last major target of conversion from analog to electronic data was about to be tackled.