First CCHIT EMR Report Cards Due July 18

Report cards are due July 18 for the first batch of vendors of electronic medical-records software that submitted their systems for testing by the federally funded Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology. Only systems that earn straight A's -- that is, systems that pass 100% of the tests for functionality and security -- will be entitled to claim that they are CCHIT-certified, according to the commission. But under CCHIT's procedures, the names of companies whose systems failed will not be announced. More than two dozen IT vendors of EMRs designed for the ambulatory-care market volunteered their systems for testing, according to CCHIT Chairman Mark Leavitt. The exact number has not been disclosed. The goal is to have all of the vendors' systems tested by the July 18 deadline, so the names of all the vendors certified can be released at once. CCHIT was created in 2004 as a collaboration of the American Health Information Management Association, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and the National Alliance for Health Information Technology -- all based in Chicago -- in answer to a call by David Brailer, then-national coordinator for health information technology at HHS, for a private-sector organization to certify EMR systems. Brailer said at the time that one of the key barriers to physician adoption of EMRs was risk because of lack of an independent assessment mechanism of vendors' products. Brailer's office last fall awarded CCHIT a contract to develop a certification process for both ambulatory-care EMRs and inpatient IT systems, a contract that could total $7.5 million over three years, with $1.2 million possible for an optional fourth year. Physicians interested in learning more about the certification process are invited to take part in a Web-based public forum at 4 p.m. EST on July 24. Also, the commission will release a first draft of updates to the 2007 ambulatory-EMR testing criteria on July 17. Dial-in numbers and instructions for both Web sessions are available at the CCHIT Web site, www.cchit.org.