There is a need for standardization and CCHIT is just the beginning. Hopefully, we will see a stronger and better organization surface and take the challenge of defining certification as it’s meant to be defined.

Had we been clairvoyant and predicted EHR incentives, we still would make the same decision. It is about the patients, not the vendors or the money.

By the way, the Marshfield Clinic’s EHR is CCHIT certified, so you missed the boat on my motives for this post.

I’ve been working in this field for over a decade. I do not carry any vendor specific certifications because I’m an EHR agnostic — I don’t mind whatever EHR my clients use, I’m there to help them to use it properly.

A lot of the people I know who carry certification did so for a bump in pay and easy jump between companies. I’ve met an awful lot of people with certification who don’t know the realities of the field they face.

Certification is NOT replacement for experience — and this is true of consultants and the EHR’s. Unfortunately, most employers DO believe that certification is ‘better’ than experience. A pity.

I think that having an external body who evaluates this technology is very important for hospitals, offices, etc. who are looking to implement EHR technology — we all know that there are too many ‘consultants’ who are really salesmen. It’s important that we have a place to turn that will give us the true ‘skinny’ on these systems.

But, my issues with CCHIT are essentially the same as yours, especially when they are being used by the federal government.

I’ve seen a system in the wild that would never be CCHIT certified. It is a home-grown ‘data warehouse – like’ system that is accessed by physicians through the web, and contains ALL information from ancillary systems. The database of information is built using the HL7 messages that bounce through all the systems, and enables this central point to also give ADT, results, etc. to the ancillaries. Does it work? Boy, howdy, does it – and better than some of the multi-million dollar systems I’ve seen in place. Would CCHIT ever certify it? Well, no. If the feds used CCHIT to evaluate whether or not folks are compliant with any kind of federally mandated EHR, would they be able to keep it? I guess that’s the big question in my mind.

Look, it’s great if a solution has a stamp by CCHIT. But the fact of the matter is, they are skewed towards the larger, more hefty systems that some health systems simply can not afford. And the greater fact of the matter is, look, it’s great if you implement Epic, Cerner, whatever — but the system is useless if it’s not configured, maintained, and used properly — who are they going to get to govern THAT?

I have been working in Healthcare IT for about 12 years now. The one thing that I have to say, about the many environments I have worked in, that even if someone DOES have one of the big vendors (Cerner, Epic) on their side — it doesn’t matter. It’s not JUST the EHR software that matters — there are dozens to hundreds (depending on size) of clinical systems that would need to be interfaced into an EHR — these are the types of systems that run, say, a linear accelerator, and simply will never be replaced by an EHR — yet holds clinical information vital to the patient record. I believe these systems to be far superior than just an EHR that would easily get the certification.

I’ve seen EHR projects that have succeeded, and I’ve seen ones that have failed. In my experience, the variable upon which success rests is not the vendor, but the implementation team.