Government Health IT: CCHIT to serve temporarily as sole EHR certifier
Via Government Health IT:
The federal Health IT Policy Committee today endorsed recommendations that would leave the Certification Commission for Health IT in the short term as the sole organization authorized to certify health IT systems that qualified for funding under the economic stimulus plan. More certifying organizations would be added later.
Certification of electronic health record systems that met federal criteria for “meaningful use” of health IT could start as early as October, members of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Health IT Policy Committee said at the August 14th meeting.
Under the plan, CCHIT would provide a preliminary stamp of approval that health IT systems were HHS-qualified or certified until a final meaningful use regulation is published at the end of the year, said Marc Probst, chief information office of Intermountain Healthcare and co-chairman of the Committee’s certification work group.
Preliminary certification is meant to give providers and vendors enough certainty to proceed with planning, designing and purchasing systems in 2010. The HHS certification-qualification would mean that a provider purchasing the systems would be eligible for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments under the stimulus law beginning in 2011.
"CCHIT will be sole health IT certifier, for now," Government Health IT (August 14, 2009).
