There can be no meaningful use of an EHR without product certification. To make the testing go without a hitch, practice, practice and practice some more, officials from the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) urged CIOs gathered at the CHIME10 Fall CIO Forum.
"The biggest prediction of success is practicing," said CCHIT Executive Director Alisa Ray.
CCHIT is one of three government authorized testing and certification bodies (ONC-ATCB) so far. The other two are Drummond Group and InfoGard Systems. Though the CHIME program included them as part of the meeting, there were no representatives from the two entities at the session.
So far, a total of 36 EHRs and modules have been certified. But many more are expected, and Ray said CCHIT is ready. "We ramped up our capacity to be able to do this," she said. "One of the things we've been able to do with our program is scale it pretty well."
Moderator Pam McNutt, senior vice president and CIO at Methodist Health System in Dallas, and chair of the CHIME Policy Steering Committee, asked Ray what challenges vendors and providers encountered in testing.
Ray said because of the tight timeline, there had been no time for beta testing. So the 33 products CCHIT certified by default served as beta tests. Many vendors had to redo e-prescribing a number of times, she said. Also, "there are always some issues around security," she added.
To better understand how the technology is tested, Ray recommended going the ONC/HHS website.
While the majority of the testing CCHIT and the other two groups will undertake are vendor products, providers would be required to certify modules they may have customized or, in some cases, their in-house built EHR. Testing a security module might cost as much as $7,000. Other modules could be as little as $650. A full EHR test would be $30,000.
The Web-based testing of a full EHR could take six to eight hours, while a module test might be under one hour.
"This is for self-developed EHR technology" Ray said, "or vendor products you modified in some way, using older, uncertified EHR technology."
CCHIT is developing a certification specific to those situations, Ray said. The program is called EACH (EHR Alternative Certification for Hospitals), with pilots occurring this month and a launch planned next year.
Ray listed these characteristics of ONC-ATCB certification:
- Meets one of more government criteria and standards (must be clearly labeled)
- Criteria and testing tools developed by ONC and NIST
- Two domains – eligible provider and hospital
- Specific to each stage of meaningful use and can be modified at any time
- Provider accepts responsibility for integration of modules and vendor implementation experience
CCHIT also provides a certification called CCHIT-certified, which was in place prior to the government-mandated certification. Some vendors are opted for certification under both programs, Ray said, adding that CCHIT-certified provides more assurance of integrated functionality and interoperability and security.
