CCHIT Certification’s Ties with EMR and HIPAA (this website)

I’ve definitely said my fair share of things about CCHIT. Sometimes I wonder what CCHIT thinks about my comments. I’m really not trying to be mean, hurtful or ugly about it all. I just want to share my own feelings about the certification and educate people as much as possible about what the CCHIT certification can and can’t do. It’s not my fault if I just find a lot more wrong with it than I find right with it. At the end of the day, I try to follow the advice of a radio personality don’t try to please everyone. Just try to be right.

The good thing for me on this blog is that when I’m wrong, people correct me in the comments. I always reserve the right to change my mind and make updates as are appropriate to make me right again.

However, relatively recently someone made a comment that kind of insinuated that I might have something to gain or lose based on CCHIT’s success or failure.

Let me clear this up once and for all. CCHIT’s success or failure won’t affect me and my work at all. The only exception might be that if CCHIT sticks around, then I’ll have plenty of content to write about on this blog for as long as they exist (rim shot).

Seriously though, I really have no ties to CCHIT certification and specifically whether or not it becomes the certification criteria for the HITECH act or not. In my day job we actually use a CCHIT certified EMR that is highly focused on our niche, college health. In this job, we don’t accept Medicare or Medicaid and so honestly the stimulus means nothing to us. We’re not going to get any EHR stimulus money so why would we care which certification criteria is selected? We don’t.

Even more interesting to consider is the following. I mostly work with 2 EMR implementations right now. One is my day job and the other I do because the wife (and also office manager) of the Dr. is so sweet that I feel like if I don’t help them she’ll suffer. What can I say, I’m a bit of a softy when it comes to REALLY nice people suffering. Probably more than you wanted to know, but those are the 2 I rather actively work on.

The cool part for both of those implementation is that they are each fully implemented with an EMR and they are very happy using an EMR regardless of EHR stimulus money. In fact, both of them made the decision to implement an EMR years ago and are very happy with the decision. In the doctor’s case, any EHR stimulus money he can get will just be like a bonus. However, regardless of whether he gets money or not, he’s very happy to have an EMR.

Basically my point is that I have no financial interest in the success or failure of CCHIT and in particular whether CCHIT becomes the certification criteria or not. It basically won’t affect my life. So, when I make comments about CCHIT, it’s purely out of my interest to educate people on the subject. I guess deep down I also hope that some of the things I write and share will make a difference in someone’s life. I guess time will tell if this is the case or not.

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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