The federal government is considering changes to the
rules that require electronic health record (EHR) systems to meet certain patient safety standards before they can be certified for use in hospitals and clinics. These standards were originally put in place after studies found that poorly designed EHR systems could contribute to medication errors, wrong-patient mistakes, and other preventable harms.
Adults and
children have been harmed by poor EHR usability. While the proposed changes aim to reduce regulatory burden and focus more on data sharing, they would remove several protections related to usability testing, audit trails, security controls, and transparency in clinical decision support. Many healthcare leaders and patients are concerned that eliminating these baseline safety requirements could weaken safeguards that help protect all of us.