ONC issues guides for SAFER EHRs.

ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS (EHRs) have tremendous potential for improving healthcare quality and safety. However, as EHRs become more complex and interconnected with several different computer systems, health information management (HIM) related activities become more challenging. Moreover, the potential for EHR-related safety concerns increases dramatically. The rapid growth of EHR adoption introduces EHR-related risks across a wide variety of healthcare settings—many of which have limited resources for patient safety. In these newly created EHR-enabled healthcare systems, there is a need for accessible, flexible tools to help facilities and practices ensure the continued availability, integrity, and confidentiality of their medical records as well as the overall safety of their EHR implementations. To help with this effort, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) sponsored the development of the Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) guides. This paper, written by the three authors of the SAFER guides, describes the relevance of these guides for health information management professionals.