As many of you know, I am on the CCHIT Child Health Workgroup, which has been both a delight and an exercise in futility. The focus and capability of the folks on that committee is intimidating, to say the least...but, sadly, we have not met since last September, if I have my dates right. Everyone - especially CCHIT - expected them to be named the one-and-only certification body for all things EHR, but that never materialized and now many of us are wondering what to do.
Two interesting pieces landed in my mailbox today that discuss these issues.
A quick piece from the folks over at softwareadvice.com, an interesting pro/con discussion about the state of CCHIT. Some of the points are interesting, but on the whole it borders on the naive. I don't know a single REC, for example, that promotes a non-CCHIT vendor (example, anyone)? Further, none of the HIEs are excited to work with a non-CCHIT vendor. In fact, some of them refuse to do otherwise.
I'm not yet at the point where I would recommend that doctors reject the incentive program. But it's hard for me to recommend participating, given the degree of uncertainty and risk. I'd like to see evidence that the feds understand the complexity of community-based medical practices and can refine and simplify their meaningful-use criteria. And I worry a great deal that big organizations will get windfall profits out of this deal, while most family medicine practices will only get new hassles and unfunded mandates.
I couldn't have said it better myself.