I’m getting very excited about the HIMSS Annual Conference. As someone who writes as much as I do about healthcare IT, I think that going to the HIMSS conference is going to be like a little kid in a candy store. I could be wrong, but I think it’s going to be a lot of fun for me. Extremely busy, but I’ll enjoy every minute of it.

As I’ve started to put together my plans for the conference, I was thinking that it might be interesting to have a blogger meetup at the conference. Maybe it should just be called a New Media conference so people on Twitter could come as well as bloggers. Plus, I’m cool with readers of various blogs coming to participate as well. I know there have been blogger meetups at HIMSS in the past. I think that Shahid has helped out with those in the past. Maybe he already has something planned.

The other good news is that it looks like I might have a sponsor for a blogger meetup. So, if we get enough interest I think we could get the meetup sponsored and have an even better time. That means, let me know of your interest in the comments and we’ll see what we can put together.

Also, I’ve signed up my first sponsor for my coverage of the HIMSS conference. I’m still looking for a couple more. If people are interested, feel free to drop me a note on my contact us page.

I’ve wanted to post about this for a few days and just haven’t had time. One of my favorite HIT bloggers, Will Weider, wrote a really interesting post about CCHIT. Yes, I kept reading even after he said, “I love CCHIT.”

Will’s main point is that just because one vendor doesn’t meet the CCHIT certification, doesn’t mean a combination of vendors couldn’t create a system that was equal or better than a CCHIT Certified EHR. A fine point that I’m sure CCHIT will never find a solution for.

However, this paragraph from Will really described my feelings well:

The problem is that vendor functionality does not determine how well an EHR is implemented. I could have a vendor that provided my organization the richest functionality one could imagine, and still implement it in a way that totally sucks.

I think will could have replaced “vendor functionality” with “CCHIT Certification” and had a quote like this:

The problem is that [CCHIT Certification] does not determine how well an EHR is implemented. I could have a [CCHIT Certified EHR] that provided my organization the richest functionality one could imagine, and still implement it in a way that totally sucks.

So, what’s the purpose of using CCHIT Certification?

I can easily think of a long laundry list of problems that CCHIT Certification causes. What I can’t understand is how CCHIT Certification does any good at encouraging implementation of good EHR programs. Maybe someone can help me out in the comments.