Certified EHR Technology

The ARRA requires meaningful use of certified EHR technology. The qualifying phrase “certified EHR technology” has raised numerous discussions in the community. Who will certify EHRs? Does it have to be an EHR or can other technologies be used to demonstrate meaningful use? What happens to my current status as “CCHIT certified”.

One working assumption to the certification process has been that CCHIT : Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology would award those certifications. Per its website, the Certification Commission is a private nonprofit organization with the sole public mission of accelerating the adoption of robust, interoperable health information technology by creating a credible, efficient certification process.

However, despite CCHIT’s existence since 2004, the ARRA does not name CCHIT specifically, adding uncertainty for those organizations currently in the adoption process or for those that have made purchasing decisions based on these certifications. I’ve read that as made as 85% of EHR purchases are of CCHIT certified systems.

This is also a concern for vendors that have recently paid for certification or those that are rushing to CCHIT for certification. In April, CCHIT reported a 33% growth over the 07 cycle in total applications.

Questions have been raised about whether the HIMSS roots of CCHIT allow the organization to be impartial and free of conflicts of interest in this certification role.

Even as these questions loom, CCHIT is moving forward. On May 19, 2009, CCHIT announced:

The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT®) today announced that it has approved final 2009-2010 criteria for certification of Ambulatory (office-based), Inpatient (hospital-based), and Emergency Department electronic health records (EHR), and for its newly developed stand-alone Electronic Prescribing certification. The Commission also approved updated criteria for the Ambulatory add-on options in Child Health and Cardiovascular Medicine. Besides the detailed criteria and test
scripts, the Commission will publish a companion guide mapping the criteria to the characteristics of a qualified EHR as described in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The materials will be published on May 29 at www.cchit.org.

Now, we need the “official word” from HHS.

Click here to read Mark Leavitt’s response to concerns about CCHIT.