Health IT vendor athenahealth has announced it has resigned from the Electronic Health Records Association, an association that represents EHR vendors in policy debates.
The company joined the EHRA in 2011 as a means to share its perspective on many issues, including meaningful use, but decided to resign from the EHRA this week because it "never really belonged there in the first place," according to a news release.
The EHRA is led by EHR vendors, and because athenahealth does not consider itself a traditional EHR vendor, its objectives and public policy concerns often differed from those of the EHRA, according to the news release.
For example, athenahealth and the EHRA specifically disagreed on timelines regarding the meaningful use program. While athenahealth supports more aggressive timelines for meaningful use implementation, the EHRA does not, according to the news release.
Now that athenahealth has left the EHRA, the company will pursue other health IT stakeholders to help advocate their policy agenda, according to the news release.
More Articles on Meaningful Use:
Citrus Valley Health Partners Has Already Attested to MU2 Year 1: Here's How
New Report Calls for MU3 to Foster Interoperability, National Health IT Architecture
MU Attestation Not Associated With Care Quality, According to Brigham and Women's Hospital Study