Drummond Group just posted the news of the first 3 EHR vendors which have been officially certified EHR for the ARRA EHR stimulus money. Looks like Drummond Group won the race to be the first to certify an EHR.

The interesting thing for me is the list of 3 EHR vendors that became the first certified EHR:
PARADIGM (QRS Inc.)
ifa EMR (ifa united i-tech Inc.)
ChartLogic EMR (ChartLogic, Inc.)

I consider myself pretty well informed about EMR vendors, but I only realy knew 1 of the 3 and I’d maybe heard of one other, but just by name. As all the ONC-ATCB certified vendors start completing their EHR certification, I think we’re going to learn about a WHOLE lot of EMR vendors that very few people knew about previously.

I also find it interesting that all 3 EHR vendors have already updated their website in some way to represent the new ONC-ATCB EHR certification.

Note: We need a new way to identify the certified EHR. ONC-ATCB just doesn’t have the right ring to it. I might work on this problem.

I’m currently in Denver attending the AAFP conference. So far I’m really glad that I’ve come to the conference. It’s really fantastic to be surrounded by providers. It’s a stark contrast to HIMSS where you’re mostly surrounded by industry insiders and not that many providers. The practical questions the doctors ask are fascinating.

Of course, the comments they make are also fascinating. The title of this post is a comment one lady made in the David Kibbe session on Meaningful Use:
“I use EMR and so I am MY OWN transcriptionist.”

The problem with this comment is that it just doesn’t have to be true. It could be true depending on which EMR software you selected and how you implemented the EMR. However, that’s a choice you make when you choose and implement an EMR without any transcription.

I’ve actually seen a number of EMR vendors that have some really nice and deep integration between their software and transcription companies. There are even transcription companies that are building their own EMR software which obviously leverages the power of transcription.

Plus, many doctors happily use voice recognition like Dragon Naturally Speaking to still do what essentially amounts to transcription with their EMR.

Add in developments around natural language processing and the idea of preserving the narrative that is so valuable and interesting while capturing the granular data elements is a really interesting area of EMR development.

Of course, one of the problems with this idea is that many people like to use the savings on transcription costs as a way to justify the cost of purchasing and implementing an EMR. Obviously, you’ll need to look for other EMR benefits if you choose to continue transcription.

Just to round out the conversation, there are a wide variety of EMR vendors which each have their own unique style of documentation. Part of the problem is that many people don’t look much past the big “Jabba the Hutt” EMR vendors which are these ugly click interfaces that spit out a huge chunk of text that nobody wants to see. There’s plenty of EMR vendor options out there. Keep looking if you don’t like an EMR vendor’s documentation method.