I mentioned previously that I was working on an article about EHR consultants. I wanted to sincerely thank all those people who commented on EHR consultants and sent me feedback on things I should include in my article.

As you’ll see, I used a lot of the feedback that you gave me to form the article. That’s really the power of the internet to bring a bunch of bright people together to create something of far greater value than I could have created on my own. Thank you for your feedback.

I’m told the Magazine has been sent to the presses and those of you who get MDNG magazine will see my article soon (hopefully someone will get one to me). The cool thing is that my article is the cover story for the February issue of MDNG.

For those that don’t want to wait for the magazine or don’t get the magazine, my article on EHR consultants has already been posted online. It’s called: Does Your EHR Consultant Have Your Best Interests in Mind?

Let me know what you think about it.

The HITECH act designated that in order to get the $40k+ of EHR stimulus money you have to implement a certified EHR. However, the HITECH act lets HHS decide which EHR certification criteria to use. All CCHIT vendors are hoping it will be the CCHIT certification. Many people don’t want it to be the CCHIT certification. I decided to see what readers of EMR and HIPAA think about CCHIT certification as the criteria. So, vote for which EHR certification criteria should be selected by HHS as the certification necessary for receiving EHR stimulus funds.

If you’ve read much of this blog at all, then you know that I’m not a big fan of CCHIT. The basis of my feeling is that it’s expensive, doesn’t measure EHR usability (despite the impression that it does), and really feels like a coalition of big EHR companies trying to secure their position in the EHR world despite having often inferior products.

All of that aside, the health care IT blogosphere has been posting some amazing accusations about CCHIT. I’ll admit that I don’t have any inside information on the organization and structure of CCHIT. So, I’ll just post all of the various information being posted about CCHIT and let you decide what might be true and what might be conjecture.

Remember that the things below may be rumors, misinformation, politically motivated, flat our wrong, mostly correct, or from disgruntled individuals.  Read everything below and judge for yourself.

See the full coverage of the CCHIT drama after the break
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