The new AHIMA course on the 2025 SAFER Guidelines arrives at a pivotal moment for healthcare organizations. Electronic health records (EHRs) are no longer viewed simply as documentation systems or billing tools. They are now the backbone of patient care delivery, quality reporting, interoperability, and operational continuity.
Yet with that growing dependence comes increasing risk. Downtime events, cyberattacks, interoperability failures, alert fatigue, and missed test results are no longer isolated IT concerns. They are patient safety issues.
The 2025 SAFER Guidelines: Building EHR Resilience course helps health information (HI) professionals step directly into that conversation. More importantly, it positions them as leaders within it.
The course focuses on the updated Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). While SAFER has existed for several years, the 2025 updates significantly elevate its importance. Beginning with the 2026 assessment year, hospitals and critical access hospitals must attest to completion of SAFER assessments as part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Promoting Interoperability program. SAFER is no longer viewed as simply a “best practice.” It is now tied directly to compliance, quality reporting, risk management, and reimbursement.
That shift creates a tremendous opportunity for HI professionals.
For years, HI leaders have quietly supported many of the workflows SAFER evaluates: patient identification, documentation integrity, downtime processes, test result communication, audit trails, and governance. The course reinforces that EHR resilience is not solely a technical function. It is equally about information governance, workflow integrity, communication, and patient safety.
AHIMA Course Explains SAFER in a Practical Way
One of the strengths of the course is that it explains SAFER in a practical, approachable way. Rather than focusing solely on regulatory language, the course connects the framework to real operational challenges that healthcare organizations are experiencing today. Participants learn how resilience means more than preventing outages, it means ensuring care can continue safely during disruptions. Whether the disruption is caused by ransomware, a power outage, an interoperability breakdown, or a workflow failure, organizations must be prepared to maintain safe operations under stress.
The course walks learners through the three major SAFER focus areas: Foundational, Infrastructure, and Clinical Process Guides. It explores topics such as governance, contingency planning, clinical decision support, test result follow-up, patient identification, and downtime readiness. Particularly valuable are the real-world case studies included throughout the course, which demonstrate measurable improvements organizations achieved after implementing SAFER-aligned practices. These include faster resolution of EHR-related incidents, improved downtime documentation accuracy, reductions in alert fatigue, and stronger follow-up on abnormal test results.
For HI professionals, this course is especially relevant because many SAFER responsibilities already intersect with their daily work. Those involved in Master Patient Index (MPI) management and patient identity workflows will recognize the importance of accurate patient matching and duplicate record prevention. Clinical documentation improvement (CDI) and coding professionals will see direct connections between documentation integrity and EHR safety. Privacy and compliance teams will recognize how SAFER complements Security Risk Analysis (SRA) activities and strengthens audit readiness. Professionals supporting downtime workflows, release of information, quality reporting, or governance initiatives will also find immediate application.
However, the audience for this course should extend beyond traditional HI departments.
Healthcare organizations are increasingly looking for enterprise-wide approaches to digital resilience, especially as cyber threats and interoperability requirements continue to expand. This creates significant opportunity for organizations to deploy the SAFER course as part of a broader educational strategy.
Hospital systems, health systems, ambulatory networks, academic medical centers, and rural facilities all face growing pressure to demonstrate operational resilience and regulatory readiness. SAFER touches nearly every area involved in digital healthcare delivery: IT, compliance, quality, risk management, privacy, security, CDI, clinical informatics, nursing leadership, and physician operations. As a result, this course is well-positioned not only to apply to individual professionals, but also as an organizational workforce development solution.
For example, organizations preparing for Promoting Interoperability attestation could use this course to establish a shared understanding of SAFER expectations across departments. Health systems recovering from or proactively preparing for cyber incidents could integrate the course into resilience training initiatives. Compliance and quality teams could incorporate SAFER learning into annual audit readiness programs. EHR governance committees could use the content to strengthen multidisciplinary collaboration and define ownership structures more clearly.
The Timing is Right
The timing is particularly important because healthcare organizations are actively searching for practical ways to operationalize concepts like resilience, AI governance, interoperability safety, and contingency planning. The course addresses all of these emerging concerns. It explores AI transparency, decision support safety, cyber resiliency, and interoperability risk in ways that are highly relevant to modern healthcare operations.
Another compelling aspect of the course is its emphasis on actionable next steps. Participants are encouraged to identify “quick wins” within their organizations, such as updating downtime documentation, mapping ownership of test result workflows, participating in SAFER governance committees, or aligning SAFER reviews with annual Security Risk Analysis cycles. The course does not position SAFER as a theoretical exercise; instead, it presents it as an operational framework organizations can use immediately to improve safety and resilience.
Ultimately, AHIMA’s SAFER course reflects the evolving role of HI professionals in healthcare. They are no longer solely stewards of records and coding accuracy. They are becoming leaders in digital trust, workflow governance, resilience strategy, and patient safety. As healthcare becomes increasingly dependent on interconnected digital systems, organizations need professionals who understand how data, workflows, compliance, and technology intersect.
This course helps prepare our community for that future while also giving healthcare organizations a practical framework to strengthen resilience, improve communication, support compliance, and reduce operational risk. In today’s healthcare environment, those are not optional goals. They are organizational imperatives.
Jennifer Mueller, MBA, RHIA, SHIMSS, FACHE, FAHIMA, FACHDM, is Senior Vice President: Health Information Career Advancement & Academic Affairs at AHIMA.
By Jennifer Mueller, MBA, RHIA, SHIMSS, FACHE, FAHIMA, FACHDM