Last month, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT released a final rule on a temporary program to approve organizations to test and certify electronic health records under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package.
In an iHealthBeat Special Report by Pat McConahay, health IT experts react to the final rule.
One common concern among some groups is that ONC did not designate the Certification Commission for Health IT as a temporary certification body. Therefore, CCHIT will have 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
The Special Report includes comments from:
- Karen Bell, chair of CCHIT;
- Crystal Kallem of the American Health Information Management Association;
- David Muntz, board member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives; and
- Robert Tennant, senior policy adviser for the Medical Group Management Association.
ONC plans to release a final rule on the permanent EHR certification program this fall (McConahay, iHealthBeat, 7/15).
The complete transcript of this Special Report is available as a PDF.
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