I’ve long had an interest in EHR certification. While the idea of certifying software sounds good on face, once you start digging in it starts to stink. At least I make my bias known up front. My least favorite phrase when it comes to EHR certification is that it provides an “assurance” to the EHR buyer. EHR certification doesn’t assure the EHR buyer of anything useful.
Considering my long interest in EHR certification, I decided I’d take a quick look at the various CCHIT EHR certifications that have been done in this new post-HITECH Act era of EHR certification. The number of EHR vendors is quite interesting as reported on the CCHIT website (I’ll look into the other ONC-ATCB in future posts).
In my quick count of ONC ATCB certified EHR products I counted 31 Hospital EHR (trying to take out the duplicates from the same EMR company). A number of those are ED EHR, but it’s interesting to see the scale of inpatient hospital EHR software that are certified by CCHIT.
Just for fun, I took at look at the full CCHIT certification for inpatient EHR. Only 4 inpatient EHR were listed.
The message here is that hospitals don’t use CCHIT’s full certification as a differentiator when they’re selecting an EHR. All they seem to care about is ONC-ATCB EHR Certification. While I still think it’s mostly redundant to meaningful use, I appreciate that it’s a step in the right direction.
When I first started Hospital EMR and EHR, I started this list of Hospital EHR vendors. It still needs some work, but I’d love to hear of other Hospital EHR companies that I should add to the list.