HHS takes steps to make EMRs less complicated to use

Experts say adoption of a standard clinical vocabulary is a good start.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Aug. 4, 2003.

The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services has announced two initiatives to spur widespread adoption of electronic medical records, but major barriers to that goal remain, according to industry experts.

In July, HHS signed a five-year $32.4 million contract to license SNOMED CT, a clinical medical vocabulary owned by the College of American Pathologists. HHS plans to make the program available at no cost to users in the United States through the National Library of Medicine starting in January 2004.

The agency also commissioned the Institute of Medicine to design a standardized model of an EMR. Health Level Seven, a health care standards development organization, will evaluate the model, which HHS also plans to give away next year.

The SNOMED development is particularly significant because it helps remove one of the key barriers -- the lack of a standard clinical vocabulary -- that has deterred physicians from adopting electronic records, said J. Marc Overhage, MD, PhD, senior scientist with the Regenstrief Institute, a research organization active in medical informatics. It is affiliated with the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

However, the free availability of SNOMED alone will not accelerate physician adoption of EMRs because the average doctor still can't afford the infrastructure, software and hardware costs associated with them, said Dr. Overhage, an emergency physician.