Certified Electronic Health Records

Certification reduces risk and effort in product selection

CHICAGO, August 5, 2008—The Journal of AHIMA reports in an exclusive interview with Mark Leavitt, chair of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT), that certifying electronic health record systems (EHRs) against baseline criteria could expedite the adoption of health information technology. Product certification can reduce some of the effort and risk out of system selection to make the first step easier for both physician practices and inpatient facilities, according to an article in the August issue of the Journal of AHIMA.

Leavitt explains the many factors that go into the successful implementation and use of health IT, and how the organization is striving to ensure providers begin with products that allow them the opportunity to achieve the full benefit from EHRs.

Leavitt explains that physicians are not charged for certification because vendors initially pay to have their products certified. Additionally, this process removes the hassle of starting from scratch because certification offers a first screening of the many products on the market.

Certified Electronic Health Records lists three main categories that CCHIT uses to test products:

1. Functionality-what the product can do
2. Interoperability-how well the product exchanges data with other systems
3. Security-how well the product protects patient data from inappropriate disclosure.

The article includes Web resources that offer a list of certified EHR products and a physician’s guide for understanding certification, case studies on successful EHR implementations, and white papers on the potential for EHRs to reduce malpractice risk. There are also details available on the work groups that develop the certification criteria.

Read the complete article in the August issue of the Journal of AHIMA or online at journal.ahima.org.

About AHIMA

The American Health Information Management Association is America’s leading professional society whose mission is to “improve healthcare by advancing best practices and standards for health information management and [serve as] the trusted source for education, research and professional credentialing.” AHIMA represents more than 53,000 specially educated HIM professionals who serve healthcare and the public by managing, analyzing and utilizing data vital for health system management.