The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology announced Nov. 6 that six electronic health record (EHR) products designed for use in acute care hospitals, representing an estimated 25 percent of the inpatient vendor marketplace, applied for and achieved CCHIT-certified status after undergoing inspections that demonstrated their compliance with 100 percent of the commission’s published criteria.
In addition to meeting underlying criteria such as security, the certified products were examined for computerized physician order entry and medication administration capabilities, including related clinical decision support. The commission focused certification testing on these areas first because they have the lowest rate of adoption in hospitals but have been shown to offer the highest value for improvement of care.
The commission also announced that nine EHR products for office-based physicians have been certified under the 2007 criteria, bringing the total number of product certifications to 98--or an estimated 40 percent of the ambulatory vendor marketplace--since the program began in 2006. Read the press release.
