Welcome to EMR and HIPAA

I posted the 2008 CCHIT List of Ambulatory EHRs and asked if any EMR Companies were interested in commenting on the CCHIT process. Joe Rubinsztain of gMed was willing to do a guest post on gMed’s experience getting the 2007 CCHIT Certification and the motivation for an EMR to become CCHIT certified. Joe provides some interesting insight into an EMR company’s perspective on CCHIT.

CCHIT certification is the government’s way to ensure a common EMR denominator. In principle, this is a good idea to help confused physicians choose interoperable products with common features. In practice, however, CCHIT testing is young and requires fine-tuning to ensure that all requirements are practical and relevant.

About gMed
gMed was founded in 1997 to create a better alternative to the paper medical chart. Weston, Fla.-based gMed’s Digital Charting system integrates medical information, cuts costs, increases revenues, improves quality and reduces risks for selected medical specialties, including gastroenterology, cardiology and urology. More information is available at http://www.gmed.com.

Thanks Joe for the guest post. I always welcome guest posts from EMR and EHR CEO’s. Nice to get an EMR company executive’s perspective on an interesting topic.

Since I’m so interested in the EMR and EHR space, I’m always interested when the new list of companies is published of who has passed the CCHIT Ambulatory EHR certification. Not because I think the certification really means much. I’m more interested to see which EMR companies are spending the money to become and maintain certification.

Take a look at the list:
Community Computer Service Inc.
MEDENT 18

eClinicalWorks
eClinicalWorks 8.0

Epic Systems Corporation
EpicCare Ambulatory EMR Spring 2008

Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc.
PrimeSuite 2008

McKesson Provider Technologies
Practice Partner 9.3

MedLink International, Inc
MedLink TotalOffice 3.1

MedPlexus, Inc.
MedPlexus EHR 9.2.0.0

NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, Inc.
NextGen EMR 5.5.27

Pulse Systems
Pulse Patient Relationship Management 4.1

VIP Medicine LLC
SmartClinic 16

Interesting that only 10 companies are on the list considering the over 400 EMR companies I have listed. Plus, I’m sure my list is not complete by any means. That’s another project I’m working on that I hope to announce in the not so distant future.

Doesn’t certifying only 2.5% of the EMR companies out there pretty much make that certification useless. I hope people aren’t being wowed by the certification. I’m also not saying that all of the EHR companies on the list are bad “jabba the hut” EHR companies either. My point is to remind people that CCHIT certification doesn’t test usability of a system. So, EHR buyer be ware!!

I also love how most of the EHR companies listed have a child health component. I wonder if most of those on the list just did the certification this year so they could get the child health EHR certification. Hard to rely deny the marketing value of saying CCHIT compliant.

I’d love to hear from any of these EHR vendors that are CCHIT 2008 Ambulatory EHR certified. I’d be happy to dedicate a guest post from those interested in listing their reasons for paying all that money for this EHR certification.

Well, I’d been meaning to link to my friend Ducknet or as she calls her blog, The Medical Quack, for a while, but never got around to it. I figured it was about time since she’s been posting like crazy on that blog and deserved a little love.

I must admit that she posts a ton of medical related content. In fact, probably too much for me. I’m a little bit of a healthcare snob and have my preference for EMR and/or IT in healthcare. Ducknet has an incredible tech background with experience working at Intel and TabletKiosk. I’ve often turned to her on Skype to ask her details about the latest processors or the best tablet pc for my doctors to use with our EMR. She’s always been spot on.

Plus, she finds nice little nuggets of EMR industry knowledge that I hadn’t seen until now: Misys Purchases Allscripts. That’s a really interesting industry consolidation of what I would consider a very weak brand with a very strong brand. Kind of reminds me of when HP and Compaq came together (can’t remember who bought who in that one). The interesting question is which EMR software system will emerge from the Misys purchase of Allscripts.

Hopefully the Allscripts marketing team is kept in tact. I liked their use of social media to promote EMR.

My main hobby is playing with social media, website marketing and things people like to call viral marketing. So, you can imagine my interest in this EMR video from Allscripts describing the benefits of EMR ina really unique way.

I love what Allscripts is doing. They even have a channel on YouTube called AllscriptsTV. I’m not sure this is the right way to market an EMR, but I’m impressed with what they’re trying to do. Things like this will hopefully start to break down barriers to EMR adoption.

I will admit that a couple things disappointed me about the video. It was much too long. The same message could have been told in about 2-3 minutes instead of 5 minutes. Even the most entertaining videos are best at 2-3 minutes. With a subject as raw and uninteresting as EMR, 2-3 is plenty long.

I was also quite disappointed with the link at the end. The image seems to state that there will be a discussion of EMR at the website listed. However, instead of a discussion of the various EMR issues, it was just basically an advertisement for Allscripts with a few simple comments. Maybe I should have assumed that it was commercially driven, but I had hoped for more of a conversation if you’re going to claim it’s a conversation.

All in all, the video makes some amazing points for those looking at EMR. If I had the time I’d go through the video and list the points they make. They were just that salient.

In the past I’ve covered a number of different free emr software programs. However, honestly I don’t think I’ve touched the surface of the various free and open source EMR software that are out there on the market.

Today I came across a really interesting article talking about the first release of a free open source emr coming out of the Philippines called FFEHR.

“This is groundbreaking for several reasons: it is free, portable, and open source that even doctors can contribute to its development,” Dr. Alvin Marcelo, manager of the International Open Source Network (IOSN) Asean+3 node based in Manila, in an interview.

I wonder how many other similar EMR and EHR projects are going on in countries around the world? I’d love to hear about them if you are working on one. Also, there’s a small chance that I may begin a job working with mostly people from the Asia Pacific area and so I’ll be very interested in seeing how these open source EMR and EHR projects will affect the developing and developed nations in that area.