Archive for July, 2009
July 31, 2009
By Chris Hobson, MD Health IT industry news followers have probably noticed industry confusion and inconsistencies regarding terminology about what to call patient information that is collected and shared electronically.
In fact, analysts, vendors, journalists and practitioners all are guilty of using the terms electronic medical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR) interchangeably as if they are one and the same. In fact, these are two different terms that address two different sets of business needs with different — although overlapping — sets of features and capabilities. The distinction is more than minor semantics, and it’s crucial for health IT decision-makers to understand the difference.
Electronic record
To many, an electronic record is considered to be any clinical record that isn’t paper-based or hanging on a clipboard. The problem is, this doesn’t describe how the data will be used, gathered or shared. Will the electronic record be used only within the confines of a single office or practitioner, or within a single regional health system? Alternatively, will the data be shared across a wide range of different providers, such as specialists’ offices, labs, insurance providers and government agencies? For the sake of clarity and accurate understanding, it is important to distinguish between electronic records that can be shared widely and those that are designed to reside within a single organization.
When discussing digitized medical records, depending on the software vendor, geographic region, country or even the personal preferences of the presenter, the two terms — EMR and EHR — are being used interchangeably. Unfortunately, that distinction has been lost in the flood of material appearing in the literature.
According to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), an EMR is a component of an electronic health record that is owned by the health care provider. The EMR is a set of applications and workflow tools that digitizes the creation, collection, storage and management of patient information within the confines of a single organization. An EMR system may touch clinical data repositories, lab applications and patient information management systems, among others — but all within the reach of a single organization.
EHRs, on the other hand, comprise as far as is possible, a complete and unified view of all the patient’s clinical assessments and care records drawn from across a wide region corresponding to all the providers who are seeing the patient — the totality of his/her personal data, state of health and delivered care. HIMSS defines EHR as a longitudinal electronic record of patient health information produced by encounters in one or more care settings.
An EHR consists of data provided from organizations throughout the service delivery chain — laboratories, providers, pharmacists, insurance payment records — as well as all of the patient’s personal data such as date of birth, address, weight, provider visits, and so on. These records can be shared easily across separate health care providers, labs, government agencies and insurance companies, made available whenever and wherever the patient is seen
Improved workflow
While both EMRs and EHRs provide some similar benefits — cost savings through improved workflow and paper reduction, improved delivery of care accuracy — EMRs provide those benefits only within a single organization. EHRs, because they are shared across the irrelevant geographic or otherwise defined region, increase the efficiency of patient care and improve patient outcomes, disseminate information rapidly between care providers, help with research efforts, and cut costs throughout the entire system more promptly and reliably.
The industry may be confused about what exactly is the difference between an EMR and an EHR, but there should be no confusion about the type of solution an organization needs. The benefits associated with sharing patient information with partners, suppliers and insurance companies can only be achieved through an EHR. In the years ahead, solutions that survive this rapidly changing market must be capable of sharing electronic patient information effectively both within an organization, between facilities and across regions. Health care organizations need to ensure that they are laying the groundwork today to make that future collaboration possible.
Dr. Hobson is chief medical officer at Orion Health. Above article published on http://health-care-it.advanceweb.com/editorial/content/editorial.aspx?cc=203986&CP=2
July 31, 2009
By Joseph Conn There may soon be one more incentive for hospitals and physician offices to buy and install electronic health-record systems on or before 2011. The added push could come from the prospect of increasingly higher thresholds of initial federal eligibility requirements for EHR subsidies under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, according to discussions at today’s meeting of the Health Information Technology Policy Committee.
A work group of that committee delivered its first draft of recommended definitions of “meaningful use” of EHRs, a standard that providers must meet to qualify for subsidy payments estimated at $34 billion to be handed out by Medicare and Medicaid. The work group recommended instituting a series of increasingly complex meaningful-use requirements between 2011, the first “payment year” of the subsidy program, and 2015, the final year payments will be made before financial penalties for not adopting begin.
During those discussions, Anthony Trenkle, director of the CMS’ office of e-Health Standards and Services, said the requirements will not be “tiered” based on when the provider adopts an EHR after 2011. Instead, whatever meaningful use standards are applicable for the year the provider applies for an EHR subsidy are the standards that provider must meet, regardless of whether it is the provider’s first year of EHR implementation.
A 10-day public comment period opens today on the work group’s initial recommendations. Trenkle said the CMS hopes to have a final definition of “meaningful use” to put out for a 60-day comment period later this year, with final rulemaking not expected until early next year. Above article published on http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20090616/REG/306169965/-1
July 29, 2009
On Tuesday, the Health IT Standards Committee approved quality measures and standards for how health care providers can demonstrate “meaningful use” of electronic health records by 2011, Government Health IT reports.
Under the federal economic stimulus package, hospitals and physicians who demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs will qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments.
The standards panel endorsed a matrix of 27 quality measures and 12 standards that build on each other to improve patient outcomes. The standards call for health care providers to use health IT tools for transmitting:
The committee said health providers who have not yet adopted EHR technology could use certain unstructured data for 2011, provided that they work to eventually meet structured data standards.
John Halamka, co-chair of the Standards Committee, said the panel attempted to provide “comfort levels” to encourage physician compliance with the standards and quality measures. He said future criteria will require health care providers to meet stricter standards.
The standards panel also suggested that meaningful use criteria require health care providers to fully comply with HIPAA privacy and security rules by 2011 (Government Health IT, 7/22). Above article published on http://www.ihealthbeat.org/Articles/2009/7/23/
July 28, 2009
Filed Under (EMR, Electronic Medical Records) by admin
Bernie Monegain, Editor The Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel has approved new interoperability specifications for electronic health records, data exchange and architecture that align with the federal government’s stimulus package for healthcare IT.
“HITSP has transformed its existing work to be completely aligned with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA),” said John Halamka, MD, chairman of the panel. “These approved specifications represent the culmination of some 90 days and 13,000 hours of volunteer effort to meet the requirements of this landmark piece of legislation.”
Approved by the panel at its July 8 meeting are:
On April 7, HITSP began to leverage its 13 Interoperability Specifications (IS) and 60 related constructs to consolidate all information exchanges that involve an electronic health record system. The work was organized around ARRA requirements, specifically for the HITECH section.
HITSP formed temporary “tiger” teams to map EHR-related information exchanges to ARRA requirements. These teams identified “capabilities” – specific, implementable business services that use existing HITSP constructs to define and specify interoperable information exchanges. For example, the Communicate Hospital Prescriptions Capability addresses the interoperability requirements needed to support electronic prescribing for inpatient prescription orders.
Twenty-six capabilities have been defined that support the workflow, information content, infrastructure and security and privacy requirements laid out in the ARRA legislation.
HITSP capabilities also address the “meaningful use” of health information technologies. Last week, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)’s Health IT Policy Committee recommended a definition of meaningful use that names seven electronic exchanges to be required by 2011: e-prescribing, lab results, clinical data summaries (problems, medications, allergies, laboratory reports) from provider to provider, biosurveillance, immunization registries, public health and quality measurement.
“HITSP capabilities provide specific transactions supporting all seven of these required exchanges and others that will be needed in 2011, 2013 and beyond,” said Halamka. “Going forward, the panel will continue to work closely with ONC to respond to ARRA and meaningful use requirements that can be addressed by EHR systems.” Above article published on http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/standards-panel-aligns-interoperability-specs-arra
July 27, 2009
Filed Under (EMR, Electronic Medical Records) by admin
by Richard L. Lindstrom, MD EMR, DICOM, SNOMED, HIPAA, CCHIT — how many readers can explain in detail what each of these means to their practice? While to date only a few more than 10% of us have fully adopted electronic medical records, by 2015 we will all face significant penalties if we are not fully engaged in this next government mandate.
We at Minnesota Eye Consultants are still delaying implementation of electronic medical records (EMRs), partly because the costs are staggering, the technology available for ophthalmology is in evolution, and especially because of the horror stories we have heard from so many of our colleagues who have made the attempt to go electronic in the past. I am concerned that the penalties may be significantly greater than just the astronomical cost of implementation and the potential for reduced reimbursement for those who are noncompliant.
I am now old enough to have a few medical maladies of my own — hypertension for one, well managed on medical therapy, and a few sports injuries requiring joint surgery. Just this last week, I visited my internist who is part of a large multispecialty clinic that adopted EMRs 2 years ago. As I sat in the examination room, first the nurse and then the physician recited a long list of required questions while seated in front of a computer monitor, the whole time intent on the monitor and keyboard, without once looking up at me as they completed the history. Clearly, to me, this was a major disconnect in the way I have classically interacted with patients in our currently non-EMR clinic. Of course, there was an examination and a little laying on of hands with a few follow-up questions. Then another 5 minutes for me to look at the back of my physician as the data was entered and the treatment plan formulated.
On a positive note, a summary of the plan of therapy was immediately printed and handed to me, and the physician, one of the best internists in Minnesota, did turn and look me in the eye as he went over the plan and answered any questions. Having a good relationship with this committed physician, I asked him what he thought about EMRs. After a long sigh, which was in itself the answer to my question, he conceded that on the positive side, EMRs were a potentially powerful tool for large multi-specialty clinics such as his, where multiple providers at multiple locations participate in a single patient’s care. All caregivers at all locations have access to all the data immediately once it is entered. He admitted it was also a constructive tool for monitoring physician productivity and patterns of care, providing a powerful data set to those managing and regulating our practices.
The negatives were, however, even more important. He felt that he had lost significant rapport with his patients because he was required to enter so much data, which was an extremely time-consuming task. On many days, he felt more like a data entry clerk than a highly valued clinician. I certainly had to agree with him on this point, as two-thirds of my time with him had been devoted to data entry and only one-third to utilizing his training and skills as a physician. In addition, he said the data entry tasks had negatively affected his efficiency significantly, requiring him to reduce the number of patients he could schedule in a day.
His overall analysis: The EMR winners are management, regulators and third-party payers. The losers are patients and physicians. The bottom line: An easy-to-read computer-generated medical record does not guarantee high-quality personalized patient care.
So, at a cost of billions to physicians and surgeons already struggling to remain solvent, we enter into an era of more depersonalized care and reduced physician efficiency and productivity. Perhaps in time with dedicated physicians, increased experience, the use of scribes (which will also increase costs) and advances in voice recognition technology so that we can again look our patients in the eye when we talk with them, we will make EMRs a positive for the patients we care for every day. But for now, for most of us, it will simply be another government-mandated cost and inappropriate intrusion into the practice of medicine with no clearly demonstrated benefit to physicians or patients in regard to quality of care or patient satisfaction. No surprise, but disappointing nonetheless. Above article published on
July 24, 2009
Filed Under (EMR, Electronic Medical Records) by admin
The requirements for how healthcare providers would demonstrate meaningful use of health information technology have gotten a little clearer.
The HIT Policy Committee, led by national health IT coordinator David Blumenthal, adopted July 16 a list of health IT objectives and measures for 2011, 2013 and 2015. It also agreed to give providers more time to adopt electronic health records.
The committee’s meaningful use work group revised some of the health IT objectives for 2011 that were presented at its June meeting, separating out goals by hospital and physician, essentially by inpatient and outpatient environments.
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, providers will be eligible for increased Medicare and Medicaid payments beginning in 2011 if they demonstrate meaningful use of their health IT.
The committee’s recommendations allow providers who need more time to get started to accomplish the health IT objectives based on “adoption year” instead of specifically in either 2011 or 2012.
In effect, said Paul Tang, chair of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and co-chair of the meaningful use work group, it lets providers push out to 2013 or 2014 the 2011 foundation criteria.
Providers who do that will be eligible for less incentive money, but will at least have the opportunity to participate in the program. But the first adoption year will be still be considered as 2011, no matter when the provider comes in to the program through 2014.
“We thought there was a kind of double jeopardy in that, if a provider couldn’t make the 2011 or 2012 criteria, and coming into 2013 the bar would be raised higher, it’s almost like you can’t get into the game at all” Tang said. “We’re trying to find a way for people to participate even if it’s a little bit delayed.”
CMS will need to consider the recommendation and its implications for the development of future regulations, Blumenthal said.
The goals for meaningful use are for providers to electronically capture data, report quality measures and use the data to track patients’ medical conditions. Providers must steadily meet more stringent goals with increasing health IT functions, and link them with outcome measures for quality and efficiency improvement in 2013 and 2015.
The work group added measures for 2011, such as providers reporting quality measures to CMS, checking insurance eligibility electronically and submitting claims electronically.
It revised some of the health IT objectives introduced in the June meeting, including implementing drug reaction checks and alerts, problem diagnoses lists based on standards, electronic prescribing and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) for all orders, though interfaces for CPOE are not necessary. Hospitals would have to generate 10 percent of their orders through CPOE.
The committee also endorsed the use of disease registries, which could be used for many purposes, but specifically as a way for specialists to report quality data and demonstrate meaningful use.
Blumenthal will publish an interim final rule by the end of December for the meaningful use of health IT. CMS will also issue a rule by December on provider incentives. Above article published on
July 24, 2009
Filed Under (EHR) by admin
The Health IT Policy Committee’s recent revised recommendations on “meaningful use” of electronic health records could be too daunting for health care providers to adopt by 2011, according to health IT experts, Medical Economics reports.
John Moore, managing partner of Chilmark Research, said, “The bar has been set too high, and the recommendations put forth will be virtually impossible to implement within the aggressive time schedule” of the federal economic stimulus package.
Under the stimulus package, hospitals and physicians who demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs will qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments.
Moore suggested that officials should pay more attention to processes and workflows when issuing final rules on meaningful use (Lewis, Medical Economics, 7/24).
John Haughom — senior vice president of clinical quality and patient safety at the PeaceHealth hospital system in Washington state — also said certain providers could encounter difficulty in implementing EHR systems by the 2011 benchmark.
He said the current recommendations might “discourage organizations that aren’t as far along” in implementing EHR systems. He said rural hospitals, small group practices and solo practitioners could be in that group.
To address these challenges, Haughom called for the Policy Committee to scale back the meaningful use objectives in three categories:
Hospitals and physicians both are pleased that the Policy Committee’s recent recommendations allow health care providers to meet the meaningful use criteria on a shifted timeline depending on when they begin implementation, according to HealthLeaders Media.
Haughom said further flexibility and revisions to the meaningful use recommendations could help spur health IT adoption and ensure the success of the federal stimulus package (Vaughan, HealthLeaders Media, 7/21. Above article published on http://www.ihealthbeat.org/Articles/2009/7/22/Experts-
July 22, 2009
Filed Under (EHR, Health IT Policy) by admin
When the government’s Health IT Policy Committee met a couple of weeks ago, some committee members suggested that a workgroup’s preliminary definition of “meaningful use” of electronic health records had gone too far. Now the official comments are in, and it’s clear that most of the healthcare industry agrees that the requirements in the workgroup’s first draft are overly aggressive. It will interesting to see what the committee comes up with when it reconvenes on July 16.
The “meaningful use” definition is of vital importance to the industry, because physicians and hospitals will have to show that they are using EHRs meaningfully in order to qualify for billions of dollars in government financial incentives. The committee wants to use its power to define the requirements to achieve certain policy objectives. But healthcare providers are concerned that they will be asked to do too much too soon. If the criteria to qualify for incentives in 2011, the first year of the reward program, are too stiff, not many providers will receive the maximum amount of government incentives.
In a letter to the Office of the National Coordinator For Health IT, Mark Leavitt, MD, and Alisa Ray, respectively chair and executive director of the Certification Commission for Health IT, succinctly summed up the problem:
“The lag between a decision to invest in EHR technology and its full, meaningful use in a provider organization is 1 to 2 years at best, and more typically, 3 to 5 years. For this reason, we believe most of the measures proposed for 2011 would be difficult to achieve by providers who have not already begun EHR implementations. Given current adoption levels, the incentives would only be available to a small percentage of providers, potentially provoking disillusionment and frustration with the ARRA incentive program.”
An AMA-led group of 81 medical specialty societies and state medical associations expressed a similar concern, noting that the committee’s timeline “is too aggressive, given that we continue to lack the necessary infrastructure, standards and systems.”
On the hospital side, both the AHA and the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH) opposed the timetable. The AHA noted that according to a recent study, only 1.5 percent of hospitals have a comprehensive EHR and 8-12 percent have a basic system. Consequently, the AHA said, the workgroup’s schedule for EHR implementation is “not achievable in the time frames proposed.” The FAH pointed out that computerized physician order entry (CPOE), which would also be required at an early point, is being used in only a tiny fraction of hospitals today.
Similar points were made by associations of health IT professionals. Bill Bria, MD, the president of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS), noted that it takes considerable time and effort to get physicians to use CPOE, even after it’s installed.
All of this noise is not about healthcare providers digging in their heels and refusing to play along with President Obama’s health IT initiative. Rather, it is a frank admission that implementing this technology will be a gargantuan undertaking that will require tremendous amounts of time and money. As AMDIS put it, there must be a “crawl-walk-jog-run” progression to EHR adoption. “These cycles cannot be skipped or condensed … without risking failure to ‘go the distance’ in the marathon that is HIT-powered healthcare transformation,” the association said. Above article published on http://industry.bnet.com/healthcare/1000879/industry-pushes-back-on-ehr-meaningful-use-definition
July 21, 2009
Filed Under (EMR, Electronic Medical Records) by admin
By DAVE MICHAELS and JASON ROBERSON The Dallas Morning News Dave Michaels reported from Washington, and Jason Roberson from Dallas.
An unprecedented effort to computerize the nation’s hospitals and physician offices could be the key to reducing crippling health care costs – or a giveaway to technology vendors whose sales will be subsidized by taxpayers.
Computerizing the paper-based world of medicine was a significant component of this year’s $787 billion stimulus package, which reserved $45 billion for hospitals and physicians to adopt electronic health records.
The Obama administration argues that electronic records will allow doctors to coordinate care for the sickest patients, eliminate errors such as adverse drug reactions and avoid duplicate lab and imaging tests. Medical errors alone cost the country $37.6 billion each year, according to the Institute of Medicine.
Despite years of technology development, most hospitals and physician offices, including those in North Texas, can’t electronically share information or even record patient data.
Data sharing confronts age-old assumptions that providers, not patients, own health records, which are valuable assets that can be used to obtain grants and market hospitals. It requires the government to decide what kinds of systems will improve care and how providers should use the systems to achieve that.
‘Meaningful use’
Congress dubbed that exercise “meaningful use,” and the government is taking most of this year to set the standards. The exercise is being closely watched by North Texas hospitals, vendors and consultants such as Plano-based Perot Systems and Addison-based MedHost Inc.
Some observers are concerned that the stimulus investment could be a bonanza for software vendors if the rules for “meaningful use” are too rigid and simply tied to buying software.
“Meaningful use is the whole shooting match,” said Richard Kneipper, a lawyer who co-founded Dallas health care information technology firm PHNS Inc. “The guts of the discussion will be how fast do you go?”
The first draft of “meaningful use,” produced by a federal advisory panel, resembled an approach advocated by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. The government’s draft, however, was more aggressive.
Hospitals, physician groups and technology vendors have said the draft would require them to do too much too soon. Only 1.5 percent of U.S. hospitals have the comprehensive electronic records envisioned by the Obama administration, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
The American Hospital Association, for instance, wants to put off one of the most important functions of electronic health records – having physicians enter all their orders electronically – until after 2015. “We don’t want to rush to do something just to chase money – and endanger patients’ lives,” said Rod Piechowski, senior associate director of policy for the hospital association.
The stimulus established a carrot-and-stick approach to lure providers into the electronic age. Physician practices could be paid up to $44,000 over five years, and hospitals could get a maximum of $15.9 million to install systems that comply with meaningful use rules.
The government would penalize providers that don’t participate, reducing their Medicare and Medicaid payments by 1 percent, beginning in 2015. In later years, the penalty grows to 3 percent.
“The penalties … are far more significant than the incentives,” said H. Stephen Lieber, president and CEO of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
But if hospitals think the schedule is too aggressive, they may sit out – and the government would have failed to achieve its goal, said Pamela McNutt, chief information officer for Methodist Health System in Dallas.
Dallas efforts
Many hospitals, including several in Dallas, have made big investments in electronic records, which they say can help prevent errors and reduce some costs. Methodist’s $25 million system allows physicians to order medicine from patients’ rooms. Nurses can scan a bar code to make sure patients have been given the right medication.
“Why would you want to set up a system and spend millions of dollars now, with all the questions surrounding it?” McNutt said.
Kneipper is urging a more expansive approach. He advocates not just a timeline that applies to everyone, but also extra incentives for providers that have shown they can use technology to improve care.
“The purpose isn’t just some idle technology,” he said. “It’s technology that is going to save people’s lives.”
The Obama administration is keenly aware of the high stakes of meaningful use. The goal isn’t just spreading technology – it’s using the technology to improve care and reduce costs.
“Not everyone may want to, not everyone will execute on the task,” said David Blumenthal, a Boston physician appointed by Obama as national coordinator for health information technology. “There is no guarantee in the law that people will be paid, even if they work hard.”
To qualify for incentives, providers must purchase “certified” systems.
So far, certification has been a voluntary, industry-led effort that identified the features and functions of a good system. But the stimulus law set a new standard, requiring providers to purchase certified systems to be eligible for the incentives.
Under the Bush administration, certification duties were outsourced to a commission founded by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
Kneipper and other critics argue that the commission has too many ties to industry groups to be the lone gatekeeper. The commission’s leaders contend that they are independent from the industry. But after three years of certification, most systems still don’t – and can’t – communicate easily with one another, according to health care technology experts.
“I don’t think the certification process has been particularly relevant so far,” Kneipper said. “It’s going to be very relevant for the purpose of having a toll gate for who gets into the stimulus money or not.”
The commission’s leaders acknowledge that certification has failed to achieve widespread interoperability. But they say the commission is now focused on making sure systems are compatible and is certifying systems that are homegrown, not just made by big software vendors.
“The missing piece is the government also envisioned what they called health information exchanges, which are sort of the switchboards to route data between doctors and hospitals,” said Mark Leavitt, the commission chairman. “They came up with a concept, but there wasn’t any money behind it.”
Progress in Texas
Texas has only a few small health information exchanges – in Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth. Dallas and Houston, the two biggest health care markets in the state, don’t have exchanges up and running.
One exchange has popped up in North Texas, where Fort Worth-area doctors pay $150 to $200 per month to access SandlotMD.com, which supplies patient demographic data, lab results and patient history. Sandlot CEO Telly Shackelford says it serves 1.2 million patients.
In June, Arlington-based Texas Health Resources Inc. contracted with Epic Systems, a global supplier of electronic health records, to sync its records with those of UT Southwestern, Children’s Medical Center Dallas and Parkland Health & Hospital System. The Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council has begun a study of an exchange and is hoping to get stimulus funds to support it.
Shackelford expects the region will have several independent exchanges that can share data.
But in Texas, hospitals and providers have struggled to justify the money they would invest in such efforts. Competition among hospitals for patients has also stifled attempts to exchange data across numerous providers.
Two years ago, the Texas Legislature created an entity that was supposed to oversee the development of the exchanges – but lawmakers didn’t fund it. “For large institutions, many of them regard the aggregated data on their patients as a resource for grants – it’s worth something,” said Joseph M. Heyman, immediate past board chairman of the American Medical Association.
Three years ago, Kneipper, a former Parkland board member, tried to persuade three Dallas hospitals to share information about indigent patients. The homeless often bounced between emergency rooms, but each time physicians confronted their problems as if the patient were being seen for the first time.
The effort ultimately failed because the hospitals weren’t willing to devote money to it.
“If the stimulus monies were around [then], I believe that would have been the stimulus to make it happen,” he said. Above article published on http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-healthrecords_14bus.ART0.State.Edition2.4bb476e.html
July 20, 2009
Gordon Gillerman — chief of the standards division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology — said officials might push for an accreditation organization to oversee the Certification Commission for Healthcare IT, Modern Healthcare reports.
Gillerman delivered a presentation for the Health IT Policy Committee’s certification and adoption work group.
He said an organization such as the American National Standards Institute could serve as a watchdog for CCHIT.
Gillerman added that he does not foresee NIST becoming involved in accrediting certification groups. Rather, he said, NIST could help the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT develop an appropriate accreditation process (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 7/14).
CCHIT as Sole Certifier
In related news, the Electronic Health Record Association on Monday sent a comment letter to the Health IT Policy Committee’s certification and adoption work group urging officials to designate CCHIT as the single certifying body for electronic health records.
The EHR association is part of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, which co-founded CCHIT.
The EHR group said it “supports CCHIT as the single certifying entity to avoid duplication of effort, unnecessary expense and confusion in the market.”
The association added that CCHIT certification should ensure that a health IT system “is a qualified, comprehensive EHR and is capable of enabling providers to achieve ‘meaningful use’ requirements” (Goedert, Health Data Management, 7/14).
Other Recommendations
The EHR Association’s comment letter also offered recommendations for developing criteria on the meaningful use of EHRs.
The association called for 2011 EHR objectives to:
Differentiate between inpatient and ambulatory care criteria; Emphasize existing software and standards; and Focus on adoption and use of comprehensive systems. The group also recommended linking computerized physician order entry systems to electronic medication administration records and data on chronic diseases.
The Health IT Policy Committee is scheduled to release its second draft definition of meaningful use during a meeting on Thursday (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 7/14). Above article published on |
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