The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) has announced it is expanding and realigning its program to certify technology used in electronic health records systems.
The health IT industry created CCHIT to help ensure the compatibility of health IT products. Officials said the reorganization will help the commission focus on new application areas such as emergency room and geriatric medicine.
CCHIT will add two workgroups to develop certification tests for products associated with emergency room care and health information networks, officials said. A new foundation workgroup will distill practices across multiple care and use settings.
The three new workgroups will supplement two existing groups that have spent the past two years developing tests for EHR technologies in ambulatory or outpatient care settings and in inpatient settings, respectively. The latest criteria for ambulatory care tests are scheduled to take effect May 1.
CCHIT said it will also reorganize the network of professionals who serve on its technical committees on a voluntary basis.
The commission will create several new expert panels to advise the workgroups. The panels will focus on areas of general interest to the workgroups, such as privacy, interoperability, security, and children’s, geriatric and cardiovascular medicine.
"Volunteers, who are responsible for CCHIT’s successes, are finding their time spread thinner than ever,” said Dr. Mark Leavitt, the commission’s chairman, in a statement. “I believe we must use those resources even more efficiently this year, making fewer demands on their time while gaining the maximum benefit from their expertise.”
CCHIT officials said the reorganization was necessary to expand certification along new clinical avenues and to synchronize the process across workgroups.
“The workgroup structure has been the same since the commission began its work in 2005,” said Sue Reber, the commission’s communications director. “We’re taking a more reasonable look at how we use the structure, not just for now but for some future expansion as well.”
CCHIT eventually wants to get all of its workgroups to produce their test sets in sync.
To date, the ambulatory workgroup has gone through two complete rounds of certification development, Reber said. The goal is to have the ambulatory group deliver its third set of criteria, the inpatient workgroup deliver its second iteration and the new network group its first set of tests by July 2008. That would help smooth out the certification process for vendors, she said.
“Last year, in a given quarter, we opened an application for two weeks, the vendors applied, then we closed it and announced the batch at the end of the quarter,” Reber said. “In the first year, there was an effort to level the playing field so nobody got to be first among all the other folks.”
“I think we’re over the need for that now, and it’s much easier for the vendors if when they’re ready to apply they don’t have to squeeze themselves into a period and hurry to get it done,” she said.
CCHIT officials will discuss the new workgroup structure during a teleconference scheduled for April 23 at 11 a.m. EST.
They also announced that they have chosen SureScripts as one of the health information exchanges they will use to certify the interoperability of electronic prescribing tools with EHR systems. CCHIT's 2007 criteria for ambulatory EHRs require electronic connectivity to pharmacies for transmitting new prescriptions and authorizing refills.
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