About EHR Decisions

EHR Decisions is brought to you by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT). The Certification Commission is an independent, nonprofit organization with the mission of accelerating the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs or EMRs). By certifying products on the market, we hope to reduce the risk of investing in an EHR, to make sure it will be “interoperable” (able to connect up and receive or send patient data where you need it), and to protect the privacy of your patient records. We’re also working to encourage various health care players to offer financial assistance to physicians for adopting EHRs, with some notable successes to date.

The Certification Commission has been certifying EHR systems for doctors’ offices since May 2006. We’ve heard that this is starting to help physicians with EHR purchase decisions, but we’ve also heard that more help is still needed — and that’s the core purpose of this website. We’d like to help you better determine your own readiness for moving to electronic health records, get started on the selection process, and be wiser in the actual purchase and contract negotiations. Once you’ve invested, the actual installation and implementation become crucial factors in success. Finally, there will be advice on how you derive the full potential benefits from your EHR, from both a business and clinical standpoint.

We know your top challenge is having time to even think about EHRs. So we’ll experiment with different communications approaches and use what works best for you: short articles by experts, informal blogs, news feeds, community forums, even podcasts and videos if they prove helpful and popular. Our organization’s main website www.cchit.org has all the formal information about certification, while EHR Decisions will be more informal, topical, up-to-date, and community-based. Share your ideas about how we can best communicate, and what you’d like to know more about – just use the comments below.

Thanks for your interest!