CCHIT To Stop Certifying EHR Software
Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) takes a new direction
In an effort to return to their original mission, the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) publicly announced “a new strategic direction that will return it to its founding public mission of supporting the adoption of robust, interoperable health information technology.” EHR systems testing will be handed over to ICSA Labs.
As GovernmentHealthIT writes, “The folks at CCHIT publicly stated its reason for moving toward an advisory role as a return to its original mission of helping promote health IT adoption. The Commission will now be partnering with the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) an industry association that counts EHR makers among its membership. Not to work on certification, but rather interoperability. Interoperability needs help, so that’s a good thing.”
InformationWeek Healthcare explains one of the reasons CCHIT decided to stop testing and certifying EHR systems was problems “making a sustainable business that we can operate predictably." A lot of money goes into investing in infrastructure and staff, and one of the major problems in this is that the CCHIT is able to generate income only when vendors are looking for certification for their system.
CCHIT must remain fully staffed all throughout the year, even though most vendors do not start applying for certification until September 2013. Alisa Ray, executive director of CCHIT, said, "It's apparent to both providers and vendors that the pace of the ONC 2014 Edition certification has been slowed by the challenges of more rigorous criteria and testing, and the timing and nature of future federal health IT program requirements remain uncertain."
The CCHIT still has approximately 70 EHR systems they need to finish testing and certifying, but once those are complete, they will no longer be doing that kind of work. They stopped taking applications for these services from their vendors, explains Modern HealthCare, and by April or May this year, they will move into a different direction. About half of all of the IT systems kept by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS were tested and certified by the CCHIT.
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