The Drummond Group has just officially announced on their blog their intent to apply for and test EHR software to provide an alternative EHR certification to CCHIT. Here’s a few portions of their announcement:

After a thorough review of the recent NPRM along with months of consideration, DGI is excited to announce that we will be applying to be an ONC-ATCB this year.

As mentioned before, receiving the HHS requirements to become an authorized EHR testing and certification body was the missing piece in our decision to move forward. Now that we have that piece, we feel confident in announcing our intention to formally apply.

In our review of the NPRM, we found it sound, reasonable and a big step forward for formal testing and certification criteria to support Health IT. We will offer our comments as requested, but overall it was an excellent effort.

And this point about Drummond Group’s long term plans for EHR certification:

Last point. We won’t spend too much time here on this blog talking about the Permanent Certification program given the more immediate concerns of the Temporary Certification program. We will say we plan on being part of the Permanent Certification program. More importantly, we want to convey that since our initial press release last November, we have known that we are not in EHR testing for the short haul, but rather, the long term.

Sometimes it’s the little things you catch at an enormous conference at HIMSS that are the most powerful. One of those came for me when I was talking to the VP of marketing from one of the EHR vendors on the floor. This was one of the most interesting people I met with at HIMSS.

As we were talking he kind of said off hand that one of the visitors to his booth had said Allscripts isn’t CCHIT certified.

Now I should clarify. Allscripts was CCHIT certified back in 2007. However, they didn’t do CCHIT certification and in 2008 but they still haven’t done any of the 2011 full CCHIT certification or Preliminary ARRA certification either.

As a side note, CCHIT has moved or taken down the previous years certification lists from their website (not sure why or where they moved them) (UPDATE: You have to drill down to the categories and you can find the previous years). However, they are listed on the EMR and EHR wiki.

The interesting point here is that Allscripts, an EHR company with possibly 21% EHR market share, hasn’t bothered with the CCHIT certification.

I have no doubt that Allscripts will be HHS certified (or whatever they end up calling the certification). However, they haven’t seen the need to go after the CCHIT certification. No doubt there sitting there waiting to get a cheaper EHR certification. This is true for a few hundred other EMR vendors as well.

Another interesting sign of the move away from CCHIT certification and on to the HHS certification.

And yes Allscripts, I am still mad at you for shutting me out of your party at HIMSS despite having registered and read the dozen or so emails you sent reminding me that I registered, but never telling me that I had to stop by your booth for a wristband.

For one of the New Media Meetups at HIMSS we met at the Pervasive booth on the exhibitor floor. I must admit that I wasn’t quite sure what I’d find at the Pervasive booth, but I’d had a few interactions with the people behind the company and so I was excited to meet them in person.

Turns out when I first got there I was told about how Pervasive was taking the data stuck in EMR software or other healthcare software and was helping revenue cycle management companies extract that data out. I thought what they were doing was pretty interesting and so I caught this video explaining a little bit more about Pervasive:

This video coverage of HIMSS 10 sponsored by Practice Fusion and their Free EMR.