Recap: Town Call on certification expansion

 

 CCHIT Town Call: Updating the EHR expansion roadmap [49:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (35)

On December 1, 2008, CCHIT hosted a Town Call to discuss the roadmap for certification expansion and to seek guidance from the healthcare community on proposed areas of focus. To listen to the audio from that call, press the “Play” button, above, or download the MP3 file.

Questions submitted during the call are answered at the end of the call. Those questions and CCHIT’s responses are provided below.

Responses to questions

SG asked: What is the process to enroll into the Standalone ePrescribing certification pilot in February 09? If the Standalone ePrescribing certification is to be launched in July 2009, what is the process for participating in that?

You may enroll for the Standalone ePrescribing pilot at http://www.cchit.org/pilot/ The final materials for preparing and applying for certification will be published in May 2009.

Anne Diamond asked: If an organization submits for expansion as a specialty, but CCHIT thinks it should be a population, what will happen to the submission? Will that eliminate the submission until the next round?

The Commission staff will discuss the submission with the organization, recommending changes if necessary, prior to review by the Commission on Jan 13. The public comment period (Jan 15 – Feb 5) on the proposed expansion roadmap also offers another opportunity to recommend changes.

Linda King asked: Are you looking for an affirmation of the Commission’s draft roadmap decisions during the public comment review? Will you drop or add another specialty, population or domain based on public comment?

The public comment period is an opportunity to collect broad stakeholder feedback on the reliability of the proposed future roadmap. Changes to the roadmap may be made after comment is received.

Larry Ozeran asked: Perhaps I am misunderstanding your construct, but wouldn’t it make the most sense to take a modular approach to this question of special certification? In my vision, every EHR gets basic certification as in the past. Products that are specific for pediatrics may get additional features tested (e.g. growth chart) and ones for specialty inpatient care, e.g. a pediatric ICU, would similarly meet additional criteria.

Doesn’t this make each additional certification both easier to identify and easier to certify? Doesn’t the question really become not whether to create add-on certification for specialty needs, but which order to add the specialty certifications?

Some product certification expansions for special populations, care settings, specialty practice, or advanced technology can easily be built on the Commission’s existing health IT certification programs, with some additions or substitutions of criteria and modified test scripts. That worked well for child health and cardiovascular medicine. But some require much more work to fit the work flow and common practices of providers. One size doesn’t fit all. For example, we could not easily adapt earlier work to emergency department or long term care settings, or to the differences in level of practice among behavioral health providers. In prioritizing expansion options, the Commission also must consider the market readiness of products for certification. If there are no or very few identified product offerings in a given specialty area, certification may not be sustainable.

Emily Graham asked: If a specialty area has previously developed a functional model or set of specialized EHR/HIT criteria (for example, through HL7) would that be viewed favorably by CCHIT, or is that not necessary?

The availability of consensus-based standards upon which to build certification criteria is very beneficial but it is not a pre-requisite for consideration.