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All the posturing and complaining about CCHIT has come to naught. It is now obvious that all vendors will have to pursue the certification path because of ARRA. No vendors who do not have "certified technology" will have a viable financial future. Maybe CCHIT won't be the only certifying entity, but no serious vendor can continue to ignore the need for certification. Even Fred Trotter (open source advocate) now sings the praises of CCHIT:
"I am happy to say that Mark, Dennis and the other members of the CCHIT team have won my respect and appreciation with how they have taken a 90 degree turn from being an organization that was largely ignorant regarding the health FOSS movement to one that listened and engaged carefully, and has now come back with a plan for certification that I personally, and from what I can tell the FOSS community generally, can embrace. This post is me doing that. At this stage I am comfortable recommending (to whoever is making the decision) that CCHIT be allowed to be one organization allowed to certify for ARRA funding, under their new EHR-C/EHR-M/EHR-S certification model."
Time to get over it, move on and find a new dog to kick.
Ehr Doc
You don't really have a clue as to the number of practices which have purchased expensive (and unworkable) systems......certified and all. Convince them, if you can, on the obvious need to buy certified software.
The best reason for a company to certify is to demonstrate to those physicians who are unwilling to shop that your EMR meets some standards.....to give those phyysicians a false sense of security that their money is well-spent.
The problem is if these practices think that something is CCHIT that it will work in their flow. Sure they are unworkable, but the overall point of CCHIT is sharing of clinical data with a Health Information Exchange or other methodology.
The government needs to have some certificiation if they are going to 'invest' billions in EMRs. They want the data. With it they can start paying people who don't supply it less and they can start looking at ineffective treatments and start denying claims based on care that doesn't improve outcomes.
If it is news to you that the government doesn't care about your efficiency then wake up. the goal is to protect their interests and how do they do that when paying 44k/doc? By cutting costs.. Somewhere HIT may help save some of your patient's lives as well.
CCHIT or not, any system can fail within an office if not implemented correctly.
.. except apparently NetPractice since their website claims:
NetPracticeEHR™ is the only EHR with zero failures and 100% user adoption. *cough* BS *cough*
You sir, are a brave man. Duck - incoming!
EHR Doc:All the posturing and complaining about CCHIT has come to naught. It is now obvious that all vendors will have to pursue the certification path because of ARRA
You're clueless.
Because of ARRA, CCHIT has been forced to recognise that situation was untenable and they had to come up with some meaningful certification schemes. Blumenthal et al had stated that they were not happy with CCHIT certification outcomes.
Reducing the entry costs from $28k to $150 as well as reducing the functional requirements may not yet be enough to save them on account of their past abuse of their monopoly position.
Graham http://www.synapse-ehr.com/ Synapse - the EMR for the superior physician
"Clueless"? Nice touch of civility. Just to clarify the facts: the $150-$300 entry cost is per physician for a home grown system. A vendor that develops a full EHR for sale will still have to pony up the $ and go through a jurored live test. Will your application be pursuing the "ARRA certification" path?
EHR Doc:"Clueless"? Nice touch of civility. Just to clarify the facts: the $150-$300 entry cost is per physician for a home grown system. A vendor that develops a full EHR for sale will still have to pony up the $ and go through a jurored live test. Will your application be pursuing the "ARRA certification" path?
A vendor that develops a full EHR for sale does not have to go through a jurored live test. They can choose the EHR-s route. It does not make economic sense for large vendors to do this, but smaller vendors may opt for this route.
The $150-300 cost is per licensed provider (ambulatory). That is a rip off ... they are trying to impose a per physician licensing scheme without any justification. Are they proposing a virtual visit for every physician in the country that choose this route??
EHRDoc,
Since when did CCHIT have anything to do with interoperability?
It was a scheme to collect fees, not a ploy to determine usability and interoperability. Their tune will change now that the gov wants interoperability and computable data. Personally, I think both of those features should be pushed among EMR vendors, but CCHIT will only do it to follow the money trail left by the gov.
Medtuity was one of the earliest EMRs to have FULL bidirectional CCR capability, for example. We have the full LabCorp bidirectional interface. All of our offices have been paperless (and had the capability of being paperless) since we started. I've never seen a system which has a more powerful Health Maintenance Guidelines feature. We were one of the earliest to have have the ability to edit templates on-the-fly and more importantly, to allow users to create new templates without a degree in computer science. From day one, we provided a very significant amount of clinical content, ~1000 templates.
CCHIT could've cared less about these and other usability and interoperability features.
Let me see, might you have "CCHIT Consultant" following your name? I think I've received email from you hawking your services....That's right, you'd rather cast off your remarks from a position of anonymity. It does add enormous credibility to your remarks.
So what is Medtuity doing to help current customers prepare for the ARRA incentives and penalties?
Running around and panicking does not provide any benefit to anybody.
The incentives don't kick in until 2011 - a year and a half from now.
The penalties kick in 5 years after that. That's a long time line.
Nobody knows how meaningful use will be defined. There's a good notion in the draft, but it was retracted rather quickly.
Nobody knows what standards will be defined.
Nobody knows how certification will be defined.
We have lots of assumptions, some better substantiated than others, but they are just assumptions.
The best thing for everybody to do now is just relax, and if you have the need to feel miserable, then start planning for ICD10.
Margalit Gur-Arie
My brand new Blog: On Healthcare Technology
Our users are most concerned about productivity. They have an EMR which increases their efficiency. They pay per use. If the product did not increase efficiency, they would stop paying/stop using it. You're in the paradigm that the only way to purchase an EMR is on the government dole under their rules using their (someday to be) promulgated set of standards. There are actually docs in the marketplace who can observe, compare, discern, and make choices on what they need, not what the government believes they need.
I have no argument with standards. We use many of them. I listed a few above. Additionally, we also had an audit trail in Medtuity long ago (on our first install) without any prodding from any standards organization. We created a sophisticated template interface using special controls to allow very rapid (and truthful) documentation, documentation specific to the patient. Despite its sophistication, a user can easily edit templates, create new ones, and even decide how templates might be applied. We created a system early on that allows multiple users to document on the same patient simultaneously without corrupting the record.
I have many times written about the inauthentic "documentation by exception" and how it harms the patient and medicine. Where were you when those arguments were made?
What gripes me about your ilk is that you treat the governments' standards as if they are the Holy Grail of EMR. They are not.
Some physicians actually care how well their EMR fits their needs and what their EMR can do for them. Where were you when such nitty gritty details were discussed?
EHR Doc: "Clueless"? Nice touch of civility. Just to clarify the facts: the $150-$300 entry cost is per physician for a home grown system. A vendor that develops a full EHR for sale will still have to pony up the $ and go through a jurored live test. Will your application be pursuing the "ARRA certification" path?
This 150-300$ certification hasn't even been approved yet....... hold your horses.
http://www.webdmemr.com/index-11.html
http://www.webdmemr.com/index.html
I guess it could apply to me, but do I really care to give CCHIT any of my hard earned profit? NO!
Al
Al Borges, M.D.
CCHIT is a private entity, owned by several of the major players in HIT. The government can't force us to pay 40K to a private company to comply with a national law.
HHS is coming up with new guidelines for certification:
http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=1325&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=15&mode=2&in_hi_userid=11113&cached=true
I would assume I would't have to pay a private consortium to comply with meaningful use.
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT®) announced that it opened applications for new certification programs. In addition to an updated Comprehensive electronic health record (EHR) certification program, called CCHIT Certified® 2011, the Commission is offering a modular certification program called Preliminary ARRA 2011 that is limited to the standards for qualifying EHR technology under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
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