Many people have said that CCHIT is going to be the certification chosen by HHS as the “certified EHR” described in the HITECH act.  While I wish that it wasn’t the case, I really can’t argue that it won’t be.  As one of my readers commented, “Do you really think that the government is going to throw away millions of dollars invested in CCHIT?”  My answer was, “No, but they should.”

So, yes I do believe that sooner or later we’re going to hear CCHIT announced as the certification criteria for getting EHR stimulus money despite reasons CCHIT shouldn’t be the EHR certification criteria.

Even with CCHIT as the EHR certification, that doesn’t diminish the value of spreading information about CCHIT so that doctors aren’t left out in the dark. Just because CCHIT certification will be established as the certification criteria for the HITECH act, that doesn’t necessarily mean that doctors have to accept a CCHIT certified EHR or the money from the HITECH act. Doctor’s are still in the position to be able to decide if the HITECH act money is worth getting a CCHIT certified EHR over some other EHR.  As an example, I think many specialists may choose this route.

I should also say that I don’t necessarily think that ALL CCHIT certified EHR are junk.  Just a lot of them.  It’s also important to say, there’s plenty of non certified EHR that are junk as well.  Yes, junk is the technical term.

If you’re making a decision to implement an EHR, then just make sure it’s based on sound principles and not just chasing government money or some other false incentive.  Nothing pains me more than to read examples of failed EHR implementations.

A reader recently sent me a couple personal stories about EHR implementations that I thought worth sharing. I’m not going to say that these are the typical implementations, but I will say that I’ve heard stories like this far too often to ignore. I’ve removed any identifying information about the people, practice or EHR company. This really isn’t about one company, because you could insert any number of names and get the same story. Also, excuse any bad grammar since they didn’t intend it to be posted here, but have given me permission to post it.

Thanks to the reader who sent it to me.

Son-in-law is a family medicine practitioner in a 5 doc group. Wife is a CFNP MSN in an EP Cardiology group. Both here in [CITY REMOVED]. Spouse’s group elected [EHR Vendor] about 2 years ago… at last count of the 12 cardiologists in the group… only 2 were still on board with the program. At least half the problems they have may be due to their unqualified IT plumber who can’t keep their servers running … and when running only at half speed. Typically, they bought the basic package with minor training … someone in their sales contingent also convinced the owning docs that their nurse clinicians could do all the local programming needs … although warned them that if the nurses broke the code … it was their fault. As a result the nurses will not touch anything. [EHR Vendor] (and the local architecture) can’t keep pace with their clinic schedules… wife and the 2 remaining docs who use the EHR spend hours at night and on the weekend doing their record updates because there is no way to do it during the clinic day.

Son-in-law’s group which is owned indirectly via [COMPANY NAME REMOVED] by the [REMOVED] Health System also picked [SAME EHR VENDOR] without consulting any of the docs at any location anywhere in [STATE REMOVED]. His group… one of the biggest revenue wise in the system was chosen as first by the [COMPANY NAME] brains for implementation. Training was provided by 1 [COMPANY NAME] administrator to the ~5 or so admin and business staff … as they were only implementing the business end of the EHR … not the patient record subsystem at this time. On day one… the 5 docs saw a total of 4 patients the first 4 hours they were Hot. With typically 6 patients an hour scheduled … times 5 docs … equals 30 per hour total x 4 hours … equals 120 patients … so 4/120 isn’t even on the chart for failure. They had dozens of patients walk out. Docs were all sitting idle in their offices … and the [COMPANY NAME] administrator and their site manager were pissed at the docs … but the docs just shrugged and said… “we’re here… where are the patients?”. Problem of course was up front where none of the records and pt data was loaded ahead of time so it was like they were all in a brand new practice.

I’ll just let you chew on this one for a little while.