My hope is that CCHIT will become one of several pathways for HITECH “certification.” The new “certification” and “meaningful use” criteria being worked on should be about achieving results, not so much “certification” of a proscribed feature-set.

I have posted a more in-depth blog piece about this on the Practice Fusion blog here

Well put. As one who has lived in the “vendor” world, the FQHC world, the Academic Medical Center world, private practice, and the specialty society world (I was once on the Board of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine – a sister organization of AAFP) .. I’ve seen this debate from all sides – and I can say with some objectivity that CCHIT is certainly not the vendors’ marionette. Yes – vendors have volunteers on CCHIT working groups – as we should! Yet our views are tempered and aligned with the views of others.

I also share your view that David is a brilliant man – and (like you) I have had my share of disagreements with him. Yet it is through these disagreements that we all learn from each other. I therefore enjoy my occasional interactions with provocative thinkers such as David. We are (let’s hope) all rowing this boat in the same direction.

Certification is almost a run away train, as technology advances are daily and there’s nothing we can do there, except work with it and evaluate to see how it benefits.

Medical devices now with Bluetooth reporting capabilities now complicate things even further too, so do we certify a device for one EMR or EHR? There’s 100s of them out there, and this could represent a lot of time and a lot of code too for the software manufacturers as each determine who their strategic allies are.
In my opinion, it’s better to certify devices through the PHR and then the software companies who create medical records have an easier job of it too. The can be certified to work with a certified PHR, one stop shopping, besides the doctor who only gets 16% of his time today to devote to patient care would appreciate this as there’s no way he can keep up with many device company software offerings to track his patients, so think about that one.
Also, the PHR keeps both the patient and doctor involved and the patient has the authority to say who and where their medical data from a reporting device can be viewed, seen and analyzed.

I have written about this quite extensively on my blog at the Medical Quack too, and perhaps it stands to maybe suggest a shift in paradigms with medical records, devices, certification and the processes that are ever changing to get there.

The other vast number, over 83%, have been reluctant to get on board with a certified or a non-certified solution.

Years ago the Healthcare IT industry heard their clamor which indicated that for them to invest heavily in an EHR they would only do it if it was certified. Hence the birth of CCHIT.

In order to help those non-enthusiastic and non-technologically inclined folks, certification had been an excellent leverage.

The whole idea of the HIMSS-CCHIT-Vendors conspiracy is ludicrous. And not understanding that each one of them represents critical stakeholder positions in the process falls close to ignorance.

Certification validates functionality, according to pre-defined criteria, that an EHR application if used appropriately it will deliver “Meaningful results”. Certification can not guarantee “Meaningful use” as some of us may concur. The technologically apathetic physicians have to give products that have been certified to deliver “Meaningful results” a “Meaningful use”.

A big problem we have is because we are simply using the “Meaningful use” qualifier and we have allowed the whole process to fall in unsubstantial politicking.

Dr. David Kibbe, what would you do to solve the problem? Do you want to lead a certification organization?

We are listening.

Thanks,

Michael Planchart

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=767&doc_id=177110