Encouraging patients to become users of their own EHR is considered an important factor in whether the technology will be able to make meaningful improvements in care quality and affordability. In fact, there are provisions in the meaningful use rules that require physicians to make data available to their patients.

This can pose some challenges when it comes to EHR implementation. However, Steve Emery, the director of product management at the information management company HealthPort, recently wrote in Becker's Hospital Review that these difficulties are far from insurmountable.

The main challenge that Emery pointed out is the need to balance meaningful use requirements for patient data access against HIPAA privacy regulations. It is very important for practices to ensure that patients only have access to the information they are supposed to.

To solve this problem, Emery recommended involving health information management in the meaningful use planning stages. This can help insure that the technology desired by clinicians will be able to walk the fine line between meaningful use and HIPAA.

Practices may benefit from starting to think about how to give patients access to their data now, as Government Health IT reports expanding information sharing with patients is expected to play a larger role in future stages of meaningful use.