Hopefully my readers aren’t tired of this NJ CCHIT bill. This will probably be my last post on the subject. Any future comments I’ll just update on my original post about the bill or my post on the Financial ties to NJ Bill Outlawying Non CCHIT EHR. I just had an EMR vendor who is based in New Jersey send me an email with the message they sent to Herb Conaway and their request to meet with Herb. I encourage other people to send in their feelings to Herb Conaway on this bill and I’d be happy to publish other people’s messages on this site if you’re interested.

Here’s the email sent from the New Jersey EHR vendor:

Dear Assemblyman Herb Conaway Jr.

I would like to request a small 15 minutes meeting with you on the ASSEMBLY BILL NO.3934 wherein you have suggested to impose the use of Certified EHR from January 1st, 2011.

As part of the bill, New section suggested is “No person or entity, either directly or indirectly, shall sell, offer for sale, give, furnish, or otherwise distribute to any person or entity in this State a health information technology product that has not been certified by the CCHIT.

As used in this section, “health information technology product” means a system, program, application , or other product that is based upon technology which is used to electronically collect, store, retrieve, and transfer clinical, administrative and financial health information.
Everything is fine with this bill, it is a good initiative except the FINANCIAL PART, CCHIT doesn’t certify any product based on FINANCIAL PARAMETERS, CCHIT strictly certified EHR or EMR based on clinical parameters. That is the reason why half of the CCHIT certified products don’t have PRACTICE MANAGEMENT OR BILLING PROGRAM BUILT INTO THE SYSTEM,

We , Digital Medical Billing Inc (registered under Department of Banking and Finance) are a small billing company using PRACTICE MANAGEMENT program “DigiDMS” to do billing for 32 providers’ offices, in future we shall continue to use the same program, why we would be forced to switch to CCHIT certified product when CCHIT themselves don’t have any criteria for Financial Data Handling as part of certification. On one side President OBAMA is trying to create more jobs, and wrong bill like this can eliminate 50 jobs which our company is offering.

We would like to meet you to discuss this in person with details of CCHIT certified products which don’t have BILLING SYSTEM built into their product.

Vishal
Manager
Digital Medical Billing Inc
www.dmbi.com

Full Disclosure: Digital Medical Billing is an advertiser of DigiDMS on this site.

Many people have been coming to my site to figure out how they should select an EMR for their clinic. That’s such an important part of the process and hopefully something I write helps people to be more successful in that process. My favorite searches are those that say something like “top 10 EMR companies” As if Google will somehow send them the very best list of EMR companies out there. I’ve considered posting a list like that myself, but I just think there are more than 10 that are worth considering and they each have their pros and cons. How can I rank 2 EMR where one has better document management, but the other has better appointment integration. Plus, I think each clinical practice is so unique that what might be the top EMR for one practice might not even make the top 10 for another practice.

HIMSS has taken a different approach in creating their Healthcare IT Buyer’s guide. This guide they’re basically just a listing service for various healthcare IT companies including EMR and EHR companies. While I certainly think a listing of this nature is valuable (that’s why I started the EMR and EHR matrix of companies on the wiki) the problem I have with the list created by HIMSS is that you have to pay $395 a year in order to appear on the list. No wonder they only have 47 of the 300+ EMR/EHR companies. Plus, they even manipulate the placement on the list. Check out the pricing for better placement:
1st Place $1,500
2nd Place $1,250
3rd Place $1,100
4th Place $850
5th Place $500

Sounds like a good way for HIMSS to make money, but not a very good tool for those selecting an EMR. Instead, there are a bunch of free EMR selection tools out there that don’t have this bias in their listings. Try out those and you’ll be much happier with the results.