There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere about the new EHR certification pathways proposed by CCHIT. However, Neil Versel is reporting on his blog that there’s a rumor that ONC is planning a July meeting with several people that are considering starting up an EHR certification program.
Makes complete sense to me. David Blumenthal does seem open to the idea of not having CCHIT be the sole certification body. Certainly he’ll feel some big time pressure from the various big EHR vendors out there, but I’m hopeful that David Blumenthal will be able to do well and keep at least some competition in the EHR certification process.
I hope they come up with some alternative cerifying bodies. It seems that CCHIT is trying to accommodate the new playing field with modular certification but they are still very expensive and I still don’t understand why it is so tough to certify an EMR. It either has the functionality and connectivity or it does not! It seems simple.
CCHIT has too many inside connections to the big guys and still takes too much money from them. They are bloated and overpriced and, in my opinion, not necessary.
I will do the certifying and only charge $1000. If I do one per day, I could do them all by next year at this time and make $365,000 for myself!!! Not bad!
George L.,
I’m not sure if you’ve read it or not, but CCHIT has been basically marginalized into a certifying body and not an EMR certification criteria creator. HHS will be doing the EMR certification criteria at least for purposes of ARRA EHR stimulus money. You can read more about it: http://www.emrandhipaa.com/tag/cchit/
I think this means that others will probably step in and certify according to the HHS EHR certification criteria as well.