Business
New EMR standards proposed
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Oct. 16, 2006
The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology on Sept. 25 proposed additional certification criteria for ambulatory electronic medical records for 2007. It also released its initial proposed criteria for inpatient EMRs. The proposed criteria are open to public comment until Oct. 27.
CCHIT, which has a federal contract to develop certification criteria for EMR functionality, security and interoperability, will test the criteria in early 2007 and start accepting certification applications from vendors in the spring.
CCHIT was formed in 2004 by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the American Health Information Management Assn. and the National Alliance for Health Information Technology.
The goal of the certification criteria is to give physicians and hospitals a tool enabling them to select systems that have a set of standard capabilities and will eventually be compatible with each other regardless of vendor. To date, more than 20 vendors have received CCHIT's seal of approval, meaning that their products met the organization's 2006 criteria for ambulatory EMRs.
Vendors seeking certification or recertification of their ambulatory EMRs in 2007 will have to meet additional interoperability standards.
In 2006, they only had to self-attest that their products could receive laboratory tests to meet the interoperability standard. In 2007, CCHIT proposed that ambulatory EMRs, among other things, be able to receive laboratory results, transmit an electronic prescription to a pharmacy, and respond to a refill request sent from a pharmacy. The proposed criteria can be accessed online cchit.org/.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2006/10/16/bibf1016.htm.
