CCHIT Certification Thoughts

I just came upon a blog post on the TempDev blog that talks about the expansion of CCHIT certification into a number of new specialty categories. It’s really interesting to look at the list of new categories:

  • Behavioral Health
  • Clinical Research
  • Dermatology
  • Oncology
  • Advanced Interoperability
  • Advanced Quality (in reference to Quality Measures)
  • Advanced Clinical Decision Support
  • Long Term Care
  • OB/GYN

As noted by Ben, these are in addition to the HIE and PHR categories added for 2009. Well, I never back away from a discussion about CCHIT. I just wonder why the Senate hasn’t called me up to a hearing to talk about CCHIT certification. Of course, my friend Al Borges would do much better than I, but I digress.

After reading through Ben’s post about the expansion of CCHIT I had to leave a few of my thoughts on the subject in the comments. I thought most of my readers would find it interesting and so here’s some off the cuff thoughts on CCHIT certification that I left in the comments:

You are dead on when you say that CCHIT is a powerful driver in the EHR marketplace. It’s a really tough decision for EMR companies to decide whether to spend money on CCHIT certification or not. Not because CCHIT certification will make their product any better. The biggest advantage CCHIT certification offers is in your ability to market/sale your EMR system. That fact can’t be argued. It’s just unfortunate that the public isn’t better informed about the meaning of CCHIT certification.

I do think that over time CCHIT certifications will be so old that EMR companies are going to have to avoid the discussion of with CCHIT certification year they have or something like that. This will lead to consumers being unhappy with the process and lead to more troubles in the future.

The problem is that CCHIT hasn’t create a sustainable certification model for most EHR companies. I even hear that CCHIT might not have a sustainable certification model themselves despite their incredibly high rates for certification. At least that was what I read when I heard that CCHIT was going back to the government for more funding.

I still think the biggest problem is that most people see certification as a strong indicator of whether the EMR is usable or not, but CCHIT doesn’t test that at all. I’m considering some options to measure that and even possibly pursuing a PhD in health informatics where I’d like to study the subject. We’ll see.

It will be interesting to see how many specialties actually certify in these categories. My guess is that it will be the same Jabba the Hut EMRs (my term) that did the original CCHIT certification.

I guess you know where I stand on this issue.

Watch for more discussion about CCHIT, because I think it’s important to share my views on the subject considering it could be a major part of what I call the Obama EMR stimulus package.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

2 Comments

  • Thoughts from a solo practicioner:
    I think CCHIT will only become a barrier for inovation and entry into the EMR market. Especially, office based, specialty practices need EMR’s which are designed for their needs. The cost of the CCHIT certification will make it very difficult for small vendors who could custom design for small markets to sell their products, especially if they then would not qualify for the bonuses the stimulus bill includes. If anything, I think it will discourage MD’s who may be planning to practice for ten years or less from going electronic. Why should they bother if they will be forced to use programs which may not meet their needs?

  • 2 very fine points:

    CCHIT is even worse (than usual) for specialties.

    Many doctors close to retirement won’t bother with EHR.

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