The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology has announced that the Department of Health and Human Services has authorized and funded the commission to expand its certification scope of work for ambulatory electronic health record products to begin addressing some medical specialties and specialized care settings.
CCHIT will begin by establishing an objective process for prioritizing which specialties should be addressed first, because it will be able to tackle only two or three specialized areas in the coming year. Factors in this prioritization will include the amount of criteria development work required, the readiness of the specialty to participate in development, and the potential positive impact certification could have on EHR adoption in the specialty. CCHIT is an independent, not-for-profit organization that has a contract with HHS to develop and evaluate the certification criteria and inspection process for EHRs and the networks through which they interoperate. Read the press release.
