ARRA

Drummond Group and CCHIT Become First Official ONC EHR Certifying Bodies

We finally now have the first ONC approved EHR certification bodies (Officially ONC-ATCB or ATCB or ONC Authorized Testing and Certification Body). The first 2 ONC-ATCB are very familiar names that we’ve been talking about on EMR and HIPAA for a long time: Drummond Group and CCHIT . In an HHS and ONC press release they also noted that “Applications for additional ONC-ATCBs are also under review.” Drummond Group has already posted information on their website about their EHR certification and testing plans. The most useful item is this 10 page EHR Testing, Pricing and Certification guide (PDF). Lots of interesting information in the PDF which I’ll likely talk about later. The pricing however is worth noting now. It’s on page 8 of the PDF document and has certification set at $19,500 for the Complete Remote EHR certification and $23,500 plus travel for the Onsite EHR certification tests. There’s also pricing for the modular certification. I haven’t found any published prices on CCHIT certification, but in the past the CCHIT EHR certification costs were $37,000 for the complete CCHIT certification and $33,000 for the Preliminary ARRA certified EHR. Looks like we might have a bit of an EHR certification price way on our hands. $20k is still a lot of money for EHR certification, but $10-15k difference is quite a bit of money. Here’s a short quote from the CCHIT press release about their time frame for accepting EHR certification applications and when we might see the first certified EHR. CCHIT plans to launch its authorized HHS certification program on September 20 at 1:00 PM Eastern time with a Town Call Web-cast describing its application and testing process. CCHIT will take new health IT developer applications immediately after at http://cchit.org and the first group of HHS certified complete EHRs and EHR modules will be announced within weeks of that launch. More information about the Town Call will be available at http://www.cchit.org/towncalls. The call will be recorded for later viewing. It will be interesting to see if Drummond Group of CCHIT can produce the first officially certified EHR vendor and which vendor will hold that distinction. UPDATE: Weno Healthcare looks to be another potential ONC-ATCB (if they get approved) and their EHR certification pricing looks to be in the $14k-$18k range. Related posts: It’s Official…Drummond Group to Apply as EHR Certifying Body The Drummond Group has just officially announced on their blog... New EHR Certifying Body – Drummond Group I’ve had real problems with the idea of there only... EHR Certifying Bodies I found this interesting tidbit in the final rule for...

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CCHIT Certified EHR Becoming ARRA Certified EHR

Alfred from Infomd.net recently made the following comment : If the product you use is CCHIT certified, it is a pretty safe bet to say that they will be certified under the Meaningful Use rule. Meaningful Use is but a subset of what it takes to become CCHIT certified Here’s my response to Alfred: Alfred, I don’t think that the new certified EHR is a subset of CCHIT. There are some similarities and concepts, but it’s not a subset. However, I think you’re right that many CCHIT certified vendors will become ARRA certified. Mostly because the EHR vendor that has the CCHIT certification has chosen to make EHR certification a priority for their company. So, they’ll likely make the ARRA certification a priority as well. It is worth asking if you want to be tied to an EHR company that focuses so much on certification. One could make the argument that an EHR vendor that focuses so much on EHR certification might not be focusing enough on the customer’s needs. These 2 focuses will obviously create very different EHR products. See Also this post: EMR Stimulus Q&A: Do You Have to Use a CCHIT Certified EHR Vendor? Related posts: Preliminary ARRA Certified and CCHIT Certified As promised, here’s my look into the two certifications that... CCHIT Town Hall Meeting on Preliminary ARRA Certified EHR I’ll be honest with you. For my own health I... EMR Stimulus Q&A: Do You Have to Use a CCHIT Certified EHR Vendor? AK sent me the following EHR Certification question: Is it...

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Hollywood, take notice of this primary care doctor

Doug Farrago is a family physician in Maine, and the editor of the entertaining Placebo Journal . He uses his Placebo Journal media platform to show his audience what primary care is all about. In this video, Doug Unplugged , he gives us a little taste of that journey. Hollywood, take notice. Placebo Television #19: President Obama makes an offer you can’t refuse How Twitter and blogging helped a patient with cancer Medscape op-ed on how to help today’s tense, frustrated doctors No comment | Tags: Media , Primary care | Category: Health in the media

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Crazy Legislative Process

Today I came across some really crazy news that one of the senators that helped write the healthcare reform bill hadn’t ever even read the entire bill. Here’s a section of the article: During the debate over what later became the health care bill that was recently signed into law by President Obama, a number of federal representatives and senators both admitted that they had not read it. Some, including Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) even boasted of this fact. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) famously stated that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Presumably the actual people who wrote the bill might have at least some idea what was in it. Unfortunately that isn’t the case with Max Baucus (D-Mont.), lead sponsor of the Senate bill that became law. He admitted as much Monday during a constituents meeting in the small Montana town of Libby, as reported by the Flathead Beacon, a local newspaper. According to Baucus, the idea of him reading a bill allocating nearly $1 trillion of federal funds is “a waste of time:” There’s just something that feels really wrong about the idea that even the senator that helped write the bill hasn’t read it all. Although, it’s not really all that surprising. I’ve thought that the same thing happened with the HITECH Act. No doubt it was thrown together by a few people and the majority of senators had no clue what it really included or meant. Can’t you imagine it? They kind of throw together this EHR certification term tey’ve heard. Yeah, certification sounds good. Also, let’s make them accountable by making sure they’re using the EMR. Ok, the rest of the details are up to you. I’m sure that no senators or even junior staff actually thought much about the impact of requiring a certified EHR and how they might measure a doctor’s use of an EHR. Of course, why should they “waste their time” on a mere $20-30 billion. They can’t waste their time on a trillion dollar ill, so why would they waste it on a so much smaller amount? Related posts: Develop Your Own EMR – Are You Crazy? I had someone email me asking me what I thought... New EHR Decision Making Process Have we lost our minds? The more I read the... ONC Standards Make CCHIT Process Irrelevant FierceEMR has really hit the healthcare IT arena in force...

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One Way Of Measuring Meaningful Use Productivity Loss

I think I better just invite BobbyG to join me as a blogger since he’s often contributing essentially great blog posts in the comment. I just have to highlight them. So, here’s one comment that BobbyG offered that talks about the potential productivity loss that a clinic could see if they focus too much on meaningful use and not enough on the business case for implementing an EHR. I think we all know where I stand on this issue. If you don’t, then you should be reading EMR and HIPAA more often;-) One of my concerns regarding a “stimulus focus” (i.e., an incentive money fixation) in lieu of a broader “business case focus” goes like this, if you will permit what may be a simplistic example: ASSUME [1] an average 2 minutes additional MU documentation burden per chart (that’s only 6 seconds on average to navigate to/”touch”/verify/enter each of the requisite 20 measures as needed for each patient during the attestation period); [2] 100 patients seen per week, 50 weeks per year, or 5,000 charts touched annually; [3] That’s 10,000 minutes, or ~167 hours; [4] Multiply by a blended, fully G&A cost-multiplied FTE rate of $40/hour; [5] 167 hrs/yr x $40/hr x five years = $33,400 MU labor, exclusive of the FTE burden associated with the additional CQM reporting (“Clinical Quality Measures”). Now, recall that the max provider Medicare MU incentive reimbursement over the 5 years is $44,000 (and that money will be taxable income). Worth it? Draw your own conclusions. Play with the input assumptions. Now, obviously, the task (from my REC Adoption Support perspective) is to so effectively re-design workflow as to totally mitigate/eliminate any additional MU documentation burden while streamlining workflow ops more broadly, so that the MU incentive money is neither effectively erased nor appreciably diminished by all of this, and the provider is better off both financially and in terms of care quality and patient satisfaction. We shall see, I guess. While my illustrative scenario proffered above is rather simple and to a degree hypothetical, it is nonetheless based to a degree on my own playing around, stopwatch at the ready, in a “sandbox” e-MDs login provided us by the vendor, noting the navigation paths to the various MU “money field” target destinations. A few seconds here or there, annualized, adds up quickly. Related posts: Weight Loss Compared to EMR Implementation If you’ve read this blog for a while you know... EMR Stimulus Meaningful Use Checklist A recent comment from Jim Hook from The Fox Group... Skepticism Around Meaningful Use and Government Handouts There’s a lot of skepticism in the air around the...

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