EHR / EMR Certification and its Impact on Your Medical Practice

By Sheldon Needle

How do I know whether the EMR and EHR products I am considering are truly certified by the US government as Certified Health IT products? And, if I am not confident of receiving incentive payments for my practice, why should I care whether they are certified? Isn’t it most important to have a system that digitizes my information well and makes it easily retrievable for diagnostics, information, and billing purposes?

As most medical providers understand by now, the purchase of and /or implementation of EMR and EHR software is becoming a necessity. Not everyone is convinced of immediate efficacy of EMR and EHR systems in each of their individual practices, but it is the way the medical industry is headed. So for most of us, this means biting the medical software bullet and choosing an EMR / EHR system sometime very soon making sure that it will work with the specs of your practice or medical group.

Certified EMR and EHR systems, and submitting proof of their meaningful use, can bring financial incentives and payments for medical practices. Conversely, by 2016, lack of implementation, may result in penalties for practices.

How do you know which Software Products are certified Health IT Products, and qualify for incentive payments?

The US Government maintains a Certified Health IT Product list at: http://onc-chpl.force.com/ehrcert/CHPLHome.

According to the site, “The Certified HIT Product List (CHPL) provides the authoritative, comprehensive listing of Complete EHRs and EHR Modules that have been tested and certified under the Temporary Certification Program maintained by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). Each Complete EHR and EHR Module listed below has been certified by an ONC-Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB) and reported to ONC. Only the product versions that are included on the CHPL are certified under the ONC Temporary Certification Program.”

It should be noted that different modules of different packages can be certified independently. One should not assume that a brand name of X means that every module of product X is EMR certified. Excellent medical software reviews by companies such as CTS, Inc. online from reputable companies to review different modules of EMR packages.

Using the online listing of the Certified Health IT Product list, which is maintained by HHS should offer an authoritative listing of products. Even if you are not particularly excited by the financial incentives because you do not believe they will bring you great return, or if you feel that because of your patient base you would not qualify for many incentive payments (very few Medicare or Medicaid patients, for instance) there are other reasons you might want to buy a Certified Health IT product:

1. Because companies that want to compete for this large audience of buyers are eager to sell the quality of their product, they are often more aggressive about good training and problem rectification. They are eager not to have complaints lodged against them, or to receive bad reviews for their products.
2. Because EHR certified systems are eager to be able to upload their material to CMS, they are eager to have good reporting capabilities and interactive modules that communicate information with each other and with of EHR systems easily.
3. Because standards and rules for certification are still in flux, certified packages and their various modules need to be responsive to changes in rules and in the law. So if your practice buys into an EMR / EHR that is certified, you are likely buying into a product that will stay current and be reviewed and regularly updated.

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