One EMR Company’s View of CCHIT Certification

I posted the 2008 CCHIT List of Ambulatory EHRs and asked if any EMR Companies were interested in commenting on the CCHIT process. Joe Rubinsztain of gMed was willing to do a guest post on gMed’s experience getting the 2007 CCHIT Certification and the motivation for an EMR to become CCHIT certified. Joe provides some interesting insight into an EMR company’s perspective on CCHIT.

CCHIT certification is the government’s way to ensure a common EMR denominator. In principle, this is a good idea to help confused physicians choose interoperable products with common features. In practice, however, CCHIT testing is young and requires fine-tuning to ensure that all requirements are practical and relevant.

gMed recently earned CCHIT 2007 certification and we found the process useful, fair and expensive. The process did not help us design an easier product for Gastroenterologists, Urologists and Cardiologists, but it did help our customers understand our commitment to evolving standards. For 2008, CCHIT is placing more emphasis on interoperability, which may be cost-prohibitive for smaller or unsophisticated vendors, hence the lower number of certified products. We expect CCHIT to continue raising the bar, and we are committed to meeting new standards as long as they bring value to our users.

Joe Rubinsztain, M.D.
gMed founder and CEO
www.gmed.com

About gMed
gMed was founded in 1997 to create a better alternative to the paper medical chart. Weston, Fla.-based gMed’s Digital Charting system integrates medical information, cuts costs, increases revenues, improves quality and reduces risks for selected medical specialties, including gastroenterology, cardiology and urology. More information is available at http://www.gmed.com.

Thanks Joe for the guest post. I always welcome guest posts from EMR and EHR CEO’s. Nice to get an EMR company executive’s perspective on an interesting topic.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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