In many ways this post could be considered a continuation of my previous post on data liberation. I’ve really loved the idea of a creating a meaningful EHR Certification and that could include data liberation. Let’s be honest for a minute. Do any of you find value in the current EHR certification?
You know that a certification is screwed up when it requires certain interoperability standards and then when you go to actually implement the sharing of data between two systems you find out that the two systems are working on two different standards. They are close standards, but close doesn’t count with standards. Many have asked the question, “What did the EHR certification do if it couldn’t test the standard?” I have no answer to that question.
Now imagine we created an EHR certification that actually did require a standard for interoperability. Not a flavor of a standard, or something that closely resembles a standard. I’m talking about a standard. Would hospitals find this useful? I think so.
Another example of a meaningful EHR certification could be certifying that an EHR vendor will not hold your EHR data hostage. Think about how beneficial that would be to the industry. Instead of EHR vendors trying to trap your data in their system, they could focus on providing the end user what they need so the end user never wants to leave that EHR. What a beautiful shift that would be for our industry.
There could be many more things that could be meaningfully certified. However, this would be a simple and good place to start. I have no doubt that some would be resistant to this certification. That’s why those who do become meaningfully certified need to get the proper boost in PR that a meaningful certification should deserve. No EHR vendor wants to be caste as the EHR vendor who can’t figure out the standard and that holds its customers hostage. Yet, that’s what they’re able to get away with today.
What do you think of this idea?