On Thursday, the Health IT Standards Committee's implementation work group said officials should pursue simplicity when creating initial certification standards for electronic health record systems, Government Health IT reports.
The work group said it developed its recommendations based on public feedback from health care organizations and contributions to its public blog (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 11/19).
The group presented 10 recommendations for EHR certification based on the public comments. They are:
- Begin with small and simple standards;
- Create easily downloadable vocabularies and code sets;
- Do not pursue perfect standards at the cost of sufficient ones;
- Do not strive for a complex universal system;
- Keep costs low by eliminating licensing fees and other expenses;
- Leverage standards that already function effectively on the Internet;
- Promote measures that spur standards adoption and quality reporting;
- Provide implementation assistance to small physician practices;
- Separate content and transmission standards; and
- Support implementation with guides and reference materials (Manos, Healthcare IT News, 11/20).
Next Steps
During the Standards Committee meeting, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra recommended that federal officials should push for simple certification criteria that evolve over time (Brewin, NextGov, 11/19).
In late December, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is expected to release an interim final rule on the certification standards and a notice of proposed rulemaking for the certifying process.
John Halamka, vice chair of the Standards Committee, said any revisions to the certification criteria likely would apply to the 2013 standards (Government Health IT, 11/19).