The Alliance for Nursing Informatics and American Nurses Association are collaborating with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to encourage nurses to request a copy of their electronic health records, Health Data Management reports (Goedert, Health Data Management, 9/10).
The group launched its "Ask for Your e-Health Records Week" campaign as part of National Health IT Week, which runs from Sept. 10 to Sept. 14.
Call for Nurses To Request Access to Health Records
In a "Health IT Buzz" blog post, Judy Murphy -- ONC's deputy national coordinator for programs and policy -- and Liz Hall -- ONC's policy analyst and nurse adviser -- urged the 3.2 million registered nurses in the U.S. to take an active role in their health care by requesting a copy of their EHR (Murphy/Hall, "Health IT Buzz," ONC, 9/10).
As part of the initiative, ANI developed an online pledge that calls for nurses to access their health data and verify the accuracy of their records (Murphy, EHR Intelligence, 9/10).
In addition, ANA created an online toolkit that offers information on how to access and use electronic health information ("Health IT Buzz," 9/10).
Initiative Aims To Boost Patient Access to Health Records
Joyce Sensmeier -- an registered nurse and vice president of informatics at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, which is a member of ANI -- in a statement said, "By spreading the word to colleagues and consumers through the Ask for Your e-Health Record campaign, we can help educate the general public on the value of health IT by encouraging them to ask for their own patient health information" (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 9/7).
The initiative aims to increase patient use of personal health records from 10% to 25% in the next two years (Health Data Management, 9/10).