Two of three organizations authorized to certify health IT systems have approved 36 electronic health record systemsor EHR components, clearing the way for vendors to begin to market them to health care providers in time to meet meaningful use requirements for 2011.
The Certification Commission for Health IT (CCHIT) and the Drummond Group were named ONC Authorized Testing and Certification Bodies (ONC-ATCB) by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in late August.
CCHIT said in an announcement Oct. 1 that it has tested and certified 33 EHR products, 19 of them complete EHRs and 14 of them modules that wwill perform only certain of the meaningful use criteria.
The approved full EHRs, which are all intended for physician offices except one for hospitals, include systems from Allscripts, Athenahealth Inc., Epic Systems Corp., GE Healthcare and NextGen Healthcare. Some of the product modules may be certified later as complete EHRs when vendors finish incorporating meaningful use functions, said Alisa Ray, CCHIT's executive director.
"We don't have any backlogs yet. We can test when vendors are ready," she said in a briefing Oct. 1. "If vendors are prepared, practiced and have done their development work, it doesn't take long [to test and certify]. It can take just a week or 10 days."
CCHIT chair Dr. Karen Bell added that the commission had "ramped up our testing capacity to accommodate demand for ONC-ATCB certification."
The second certification organization, the Drummond Group, has listed on its Web site three certified products, including one complete physician practice EHR by ChartLogic Inc., and modules from QRS Inc. and Ifa United I-tech Inc.
Certification is designed to assure health care providers that the EHR technology that they acquire can perform the functions they need to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive program. Physicians and hospitals that become meaningful users of certified EHRs and modules are eligible for incentive payments under the HITECH Act.
Many of the products that CCHIT tested and certified were already certified in the organization's independently developed certification program for more integrated EHRs, Ray said.
And some of CCHIT's clients were working with the organization's preliminary certification program that had focused on requirements of the meaningful use interim rule/ As a result, these vendors had few changes to make in their products to be prepared for certification, she said.
"Many of them were keeping a close eye on what was happening as the rule developed. They were trying to keep up and be as prepared for the final rule as they could be," Ray said.
CCHIT anticipates more products to be certified each week. They will be listed on its Web site and at ONC's Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL).
CCHIT also is developing a program to certify hospital self-developed EHR systems that are onsite and for which it has four pilots underway to test its program, Ray said. CCHIT expects to make the certification available more broadly for hospitals starting in mid-November.
The list of certified EHRs is online .
