Law Students

What is it going to take for a health care provider to implement an electronic health record (EHR) system so that they can participate in the HITECH Act's incentives?

• Redefined Workflows
• National Health Care Infrastructure
• Certified Electronic Health Records
• Industry Standards
• Training & Education
• Regulatory Compliance
• Software/Implementation Partners
  

It is going to take all of the above and more. Implementing an EHR is a classical wicked problem, given the level of social, political, and organizational complexity involved and the number of stakeholders that will need to participate. This is true with respect to HITECH/HIPAA regulatory compliance as it is for each one of the "bulleted items," and the list is clearly not exhaustive.

In short, it will take an individual provider, and the health care industry as a whole, the kind of collaborative effort that the industry is arguably unaccustomed to. Collaboration is no guarantee for success, but going it alone will significantly increase the probability of failure.

It will take a multidisciplinary team (management, healthcare professionals, informatics, legal, and outside partners) to improve the odds, and it won't hurt to have team players fluent in multiple domains; in other words, a combination of specialists and generalists.