New This Week on HealthIT.gov

New This Week on HealthIT.gov

Earlier this week National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari urged early adopters, innovators and others who are using health information systems to participate in the 2012 ONC Annual Meeting Video Challenge.

ONC wants your short, two-minute videos that talk about how you achieved meaningful use, are using your health IT systems to improve quality and efficiency, engaging patients and how you made privacy and security a priority. You can drop your smart phone-recorded videos in our mailbox until 3 pm EST Dec. 11. We will announce the winners at the Public Day of our Annual Meeting in Washington DC the next day. More information about the Annual Meeting will be available at www.healthit.gov/2012oncmeeting/.

Buzz blog highlights

We linked to video of a Staten Island woman whose home was destroyed and who found priceless family pictures and other documents in the rubble. Part of the blog reads:

"In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, people on the East Coast, especially those in New York and New Jersey, will be busy this Thanksgiving rebuilding their lives, so our thoughts are with them.

The tragedy also got us thinking about what sorts of other paper debris might be floating around (think paper medical records). It turns out paper records fared badly during the storm, but health IT systems were largely unscathed. Read the blog and learn tips to safeguard electronic patient records from a doctor who rode out the storm in Newark: http://www.healthit.gov/buzz-blog/. We also have a first-hand account of the benefits of EHRs in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Implement and Install an EHR System

Are you installing an EHR System in your practice? Check out tips and resources to Conduct Training & Implement an EHR System, Step 4 of the How to Implement EHRs lifecycle. Some available downloads to select an EHR include the following:

• Chart Migration & Scanning Checklist
• EHR Implementation Go-Live Planning Checklist
• System Test Plan

For more data and information, visit the EHR implementation lifecycle steps and check out the National Learning Consortium (NLC).

Get wired and social

Follow us on Twitter @ONC_HealthIT and join our Health IT and Electronic Health Records group on Linked In. Sign up for our blog at http://www.healthit.gov/buzz-blog/.