On Friday, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT released a final rule on a temporary program designed to help ONC approve organizations to test and certify electronic health records under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, Healthcare IT News reports.
Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate "meaningful use" of certified EHRs will qualify for federal incentive payments (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 6/18).
The temporary certification program will allow entities to both test and certify EHR products (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 6/18). A final version of the temporary certification rule is scheduled to be published on June 24.
ONC said it expects to release a companion final rule for the permanent certification program this fall.
Temporary Program Details
In its final rule, ONC did not designate the Certification Commission for Health IT as a temporary certification entity. Therefore, CCHIT will need to apply for the status along with other interested organizations.
In addition, the rule did not offer "grandfathered" status to provide automatic ONC certification to existing EHRs, even if the systems previously received certification from CCHIT (Goedert, Health Data Management, 6/18).
ONC held a media briefing Friday to discuss further details about the final rule (Healthcare IT News, 6/18).