Software Advice: Should CCHIT Influence Your EHR Selection?

Software Advice, a site that focuses on helping generally non-technically oriented professionals determine what technology they should adopt, has written a guide on CCHIT Certification and its role within electronic health record (EHR) selection process.

The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT®) has gained substantial momentum since the organization’s founding in 2004. As a result, buyers of electronic health records (EHRs) – or electronic medical records (EMRs), as they are also known - often ask me what role CCHIT certification should play in their purchase decision. The answer is not always simple, so I decided to explain what CCHIT is, what it is not, and why some participants have passionate views for or against it.

Software Advice sees CCHIT Certification as a valuable component of the selection process, but offers:

So, in the interest of serving our provider audience, here are five key takeaways for use in determining CCHIT’s role in your EHR selection:

• Review the CCHIT criteria yourself and determine the relevance of each to your ideal workflow. The criteria are well defined, so even if you do not need every capability, you could select a subset for use in evaluating EHRs for your practice.
• Understand the binary nature of CCHIT certification. If an EHR does not fully address each of the CCHIT requirements, it will not be certified. Therefore recognize that there are many good EHRs that may not achieve certification, but may still meet your requirements.
• Consider the requirements of your specialty. If you need EHR capabilities specific to your segment of medicine, realize that CCHIT does not yet cover specialties. You have to evaluate specialty requirements on your own.
• Do your homework on other critical evaluation criteria that fall outside CCHIT, including: ease-of-use, customer satisfaction and vendor viability. CCHIT is very clear that these due diligence items are the buyer’s responsibility.
• Understand the biases of both CCHIT proponents and detractors. It is natural for these industry players to have strong opinions, just be sure to put them in context, do your own research, and understand that the ultimate decision is yours.

If this sounds interesting, take some time to review the entire Software Advice guide on CCHIT Certification.