The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced this week that it has issued nine guides to help healthcare organizations assess the safety of electronic health records and to use them effectively.

A recent article in FierceHealthcare outlined the initiative.

The guides have been in the works since the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services released a final health IT safety plan last July, Jacob Reider, ONC Chief Medical Officer, said in a post yesterday to the Health IT Buzz blog.

"We've never before had a set of tools that care delivery organizations can use to perform self-assessments and developer customized improvement plans," Reider said. "[W]e've learned that there is a great deal of variability in how information technology is implemented and optimized in care delivery organizations, and this variability may account for some of the problems with the safety and reliability of health IT. These guides help enhance the likelihood that health information technology is implemented in a manner that aligns with best practice."

The guides are available here. This is a valuable resource for practices to spend time digesting, discussing and understanding how they are or can be implemented in their practice.