Check out the following descriptions of the first four EHR vendors to become CCHIT 2011 and Preliminary ARRA EHR certified per Jim Tate’s guest blog post on Hitech Answers:

eHealth Made EASY, Version 3 by eHealth Made EASY, LLC, achieved Preliminary ARRA 2011 Certification for ‘CMS Quality Reporting” in both the Eligible Providers and Hospitals domains. They look to be on track to supply the ‘meaningful use’ reporting functionality across the entire range of platforms. I’m guessing they could become the reporting engine for quite a few hospital systems and EHRs.

KIS Track, Version 5.1, by Kaulkin Information Systems, achieved Preliminary ARRA 2011 Certification for ‘Patient Electronic Access to Health Information’ for Eligible Providers. Looks like they may be getting into the patient portal market.

Medios, Version 4.5, by IOS Health Systems, passed inspection on 27 of 27 objectives for Preliminary 2011 ARRA Certification for Eligible Providers. It appears they are interested in the Ambulatory EHR market.

ABELMed EHR-EMR/PM, Version 11, by ABEL Medical Software Inc., is the first EHR vendor to achieve the CCHIT 2011 Comprehensive Ambulatory Certification. Usability testing is now a part of the CCHIT Ambulatory Certification and in this area ABELMed scored 4 out of 5 stars.

My personal takeaways:

Takeaway #1: Four EHR vendors and I’ve only really heard of one of the four. Sifting through all the EHR vendors is just going to get more and more difficult.

Takeaway #2: How will these vendors and the users of these EMR vendors feel if HHS comes out with some drastically different or drastically simplified criteria for EHR certification?

There’s been a series of posts done on EMR and HIPAA that I think are worth highlighting on this site. They basically cover the status of where we’re at in understanding what will be defined as “certified EHR” in order to get the ARRA EHR stimulus money.

First, take a look a post talking about the HIT Policy committee meeting on EHR certification where they discussed and approved a number of items related to defining certified EHR.

After that initial meeting, CCHIT held a town hall meeting to present their new CCHIT Preliminary ARRA Certified EHR certification plan. Then, take a look at a bit of a comparison of the Preliminary ARRA Certified and CCHIT Certified that was presented at the same meeting.

Finally, no discussion of these EHR certifications is complete without taking a look at the costs for the new CCHIT EHR certifications. That link also discusses the new EHR certification bodies that are likely to be created and recognized by HHS to be able to certify EHR software in order to obtain the ARRA EHR stimulus money.