Sure, you’re an IT professional, and you’re not exactly shocked by news that a vendor has found some bugs in its code. (In fact, the more cynical out there probably start to wonder what’s up when they don’t get bug reports.)
That being said, with Meaningful Use at a white heat, this is a particularly bad time for an EMR vendor to find problems with the data reporting functions. Unfortunately for them (and possibly, you) that’s just what GE Healthcare is facing.
Last week, GE Healthcare announced what it termed “inaccuracies” in the reporting functions contained within its Centricity Electronic Medical Record and Centricity Practice Solution products. The division’s VP and general manager sent out a letter to users last Thursday saying the problems might create flaws in results from SAP’s Crystal Reports or GE’s Medical Quality Improvement Consortium.
While the vendor promises to send out an update that will fix everything by November, right now you’d best not try to attest for MU. Not fun.
Worse, if yo u’ve already attested, GE’s suggesting nicely that you re-run reports for your attestation period and see if you still meet MU standards. Even less fun.
I’m not writing this to wail on GE — I’m sure execs there are suffering enough — but to simply give the story a bit more play, as I haven’t seen it tweeted or Facebooked as widely as I’d have expected.
More importantly, perhaps, I though it was worth asking the following. What happens if in the rush to help providers meet MU deadlines, other vendors have made slip ups they haven’t discovered yet? What if other major vendors discover flaws in EMRs that could jeopardize attestations nationwide?
And what do you plan to do, if anything, to make sure you’re not caught unprepared if your vendor has to fess up to serious problems like these?
