The federal Health IT Policy Committee recommended health IT vendors use labels to clarify that their products are certified to satisfy first-stage requirements for meaningful use in order to ward off potential confusion among buyers about whether systems they are considering will qualify them for the incentive program.
The labeling scheme was one of the suggestions made by the committee to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, which has asked for comments about its plan to offer "temporary" certification of health IT products and systems.
The temporary certification program is designed to qualify health IT systems for first stage of the meaningful use plan, which begins next year. A permanent plan will be developed to certify health IT products for future phases of meaningful use.
Comments are due April 9 on the temporary certification program.
Labeling is important because "the term "˜certification' is used freely in the marketplace," said Paul Egerman, a retired businessman who co-chairs the panel that made the recommendations.
Under the proposed rule, vendors would be directed to label their products with the date the product was certified. The committee also recommended that technology that is certified during 2010 should contain a label specifying that it has been certified for Stage 1 requirements only, he said.
"With this approach, there would be clarity for a purchaser who wanted to begin Stage 1 at a later time," Egerman said, referring to an option for which providers can demonstrate meaningful use when they are ready to qualify for incentive payments under the HITECH Act.
To help providers keep track of certified products, the committee also urged ONC and certifying organizations to maintain a Web site listing the names of vendors and their product version numbers that have received certification.
The site would also identify the stage of meaningful use requirements for which they have been certified and tested, Egerman said.
The committee also advised that vendors sell EHR modules, such as for e-prescribing with a label pointing out that ONC has not tested the module for interoperability with other developers' EHR modules. Testing for interoperability would involve more complexity and there is a lack of standards to do so, according to the committee.
Overall, the committee praised ONC's proposed rule for establishing a more "objective and transparent certification process." Egerman added that, "we have some concern for clarity and communications. We wanted to make sure that people understand what it means to be certified. "
The policy committee letters are online.
