Official ONC-ATCB Certified EHR List

ONC and HHS have finally released the official list of ONC-ATCB Certified EHR which is essential to those providers interested in the ARRA EMR stimulus money. Of course, ONC is just providing the data that Drummond Group, CCHIT and other ONC-ATCB bodies (assuming more will start certifying) are providing them. I mentioned that we could look forward to this official list in my Drummond Group ONC-ATCB EHR Certifications post and my CCHIT ONC-ATCB EHR certifications post.

Looks like quite a few more EMR vendors are now ONC-ATCB certified since those first posts. Watch for many many more (almost all) of the EMR vendors to be certified by the end of the year or early 2011.

Looks like ONC is working on a version 2 of the list. Here’s their description of the next version of the ONC-ATCB Certified EHR list:

Please note: This is Version 1.0 of the Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL). Version 2.0 is under development and is expected to provide additional information, such as a list of the Clinical Quality Measures to which a given product was tested; and additional functionality, such as different ways to query and sort the data for viewing. The later version will also provide the above-mentioned reporting number that will be accepted by CMS for purposes of attestation under the EHR (“meaningful use”) incentives programs.

That number is going to be key next year for those wanting stimulus money. I’m glad they’re making access to the reporting number needed for attestation for EHR incentives easy to find.

Only problem with the above list is that it hasn’t been updates since Nov. 1. I wonder how often they’ll update it. Although, it probably won’t matter much in the long run.

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.

13 Comments

  • Here’s the direct link to ONC’s product:

    http://onc-chpl.force.com/ehrcert

    Here are my quick thoughts:

    -What value does the market gain from having ONC regurgitate the CCHIT and Drummond listings? Does ONC think it adds more to their credibility to have a consolidated listing that took a month to publish on their website?

    -Is this as good as ONC can promulgate? All it is is a dumb flat screen face with no sort capabilities.

    -Would be nice for ONC to tell everybody when version 2.0 with all those nice additional features is forthcoming. You’d think something as basic as presenting the list of clinical quality measures “to which a given product was tested” would have been the primary display consideration even on 1.0.

    -Why is the first field the respective ATCB? Who cares? First field ought to be the vendor.

    Does anyone know of any vendor/EHR which failed ATCB testing? No? So everyone is certified … which means either vendors know what functionality they must supply and were successful in ensuring that functionality … OR … the ATCB testing protocol is weak. My point is that if everybody is passing … that means the process is unnecessary.

  • Thanks. You’re right. I forgot to add the link. It’s there now.

    I think there’s value in them having the list of EHR certifications in one place. In fact, I think they should have not allowed the ONC-ATCB to announce who they certify. Why even have certifying body on the list at all?

  • Why bother to have ONC certify ATCBs or for ATCBs to certify products if nobody fails the proscribed testing?

    It’s not as if all this testing screened anyone out. All it did is create a cost for the vendors … and a revenue stream to CCHIT and Drummond … and funded ONC to hire a bunch of academic techies.

  • Oh sure. EHR Certification makes no sense at all and provides no value to doctors, but it’s part of legislation so they have to do it for stimulus money. That’s all.

  • John, usually I agree with many of your views; on this I differ. Being on the side of EHR Vendor community, I agee testing and certification is an expense and an overhead.
    But, these EHRs need to be tested for standardization at some point. Market will dictate the popularity of the product based on ‘look and feel’, ease of use and functionality. But there has to be a independent body that can make sure that uniformity of standards are followed and basics of interoperability is existent.
    We went through this exercise and it was reasonably extensive; it will become much more extensive next year once the interoperability test criteria is developed.
    I beleive the current status is a good start; it has to be slow. There is no denying the fact that a ambulatory clinic (at least 85% of them) are in the stone age; anything to start with is better; anything is a small step forward, even if someone tells me they are going to go with DOS based system, I would say, its better than the paperfiles floating around the clinics.
    Baby steps and patience are necessary ingredients to fast forward the early 80s environment to 2015s. Its going to take time and effort. One thing that cannot be denied is that the ambulatory setting is in the early 80s in terms of IT and even a restaurant has more ‘applied IT’ than 85% of the ambulatory clinics.
    And John, yes the ONC lists are updated every Friday night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Anthony…

    Definitely industry standards and interoperability are essential … but what you outline here was not the objective of ONC’s MU certification program. To your comment:

    “But, these EHRs need to be tested for standardization at some point. … But there has to be a independent body that can make sure that uniformity of standards are followed and basics of interoperability is existent.”

    ONC creditation program inserts itself into the practice of medicine by hanging out a carrot and wielding a stick to incentivize up front EHR purchases by the market in exchange for a government rebate if MU criteria are met by the practice.

    To much has been made of the vendors providing software with an ONC stamp on the boxtop … and not on improving clinical practices and processes to deliver better health care outcomes.

    Ensuring a healthier America through the first step of requiring practices to acquire an ATCB-certified EHR is analogous to “pushing a rope up a hill”.

  • Anthony,
    I wouldn’t have had as much problem if they’d focused on establishing and testing and certifying an interoperability standard. That would have been incredibly useful and beneficial. Plus, by incentivizing the exchange of healthcare data they’d be indirectly incentivizing the use of EMR since an EMR is almost essential to being able to exchange data electronically.

    The first certification doesn’t do enough of this and certifies a bunch of other things which don’t benefit doctors. That’s my issue.

  • John…

    “I wouldn’t have had as much problem if they’d focused on establishing and testing and certifying an interoperability standard. That would have been incredibly useful and beneficial.”

    Exactly correct. When NHS mandated that Brit primary care practices would need to serve their contracted patients 24/7 … unless an after hours service could provide coverage … there was high demand for one of a handful of EHRs offered ambulatory surgeries. The small number made interoperability between primary care providers the highest priority.

    Brits are a long way from a far flung national health information network but they’ve done very well linking up local practices, pharmacies, and clinics.

  • A good approach would be to use an EMR that does not use templates and is therefore totally configurable to your unique usage and your needs. I work with this type of program and would be happy to show it to you. You can contact me at speechdata@gmail.com.

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