On Monday August 30, 2010, the ONC announced that there will be two official certifying bodies for Electronic Health Records. This is good news because now there will be options for smaller vendors or home grown systems, and it should drive the costs down. This will also create competition to drive the certification process in a more efficient and effective direction.
Initial EHR Certification Bodies Named
Key step in national initiative toward adoption of electronic health records
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), Chicago, Ill. and the Drummond Group Inc. (DGI), Austin, Texas, were named today by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) as the first technology review bodies that have been authorized to test and certify electronic health record (EHR) systems for compliance with the standards and certification criteria that were issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year. Read More ->
Today CCHIT announced certifications for behavioral health either as an add-on to the ambulatory certification or as a stand-alone certification. This is important in that it helps recognize behavioral health as a player in the specialty field as well as bringing standardization to the behavioral health vendor community for what is needed.
A concern here is that CCHIT is not the only certifying body and this certification will need to meet all of the meaningful use certification requirements.
Today CMS launched a website devoted to the EHR incentives for both Medicare and Medicaid. This is a useful tool to help bring organizations up to speed on where the incentives are and what the federal government is doing. This site is definitely a resource and is not busy with many visuals or graphics.
Please let us know if there is anything that Afia can help your organization with to ensure that your organization receives all their incentives.
Jeremy presented today in Baltimore at the Mental Health Corporations of America’s spring conference about Creating Strategies and Managing Risk through IT Portfolios. This presentation focused on how your organization can create IT strategic plans to align business goals and support your underlying infrastructure of technology.
Click on the image below to download the presentation
In the afternoon, Jeremy discussed Vendor selection and demonstrated the Afia selection tool as a way to evaluate and manage different vendors and competing priorities.
This is a great push for the behavioral health field to be included in the federal Health IT incentive payments for meaningful use and certified Electronic Health Records. Please contact your representative and ask them to support The Health Information Technology Extension for Behavioral Health Services Act of 2010.
This will create a larger incentive for psychiatrists to begin to adopt e-prescribing systems in the Mental Health field. This has been one of the most difficult parts of fully implementing e-prescribing for CMH physicians.
Yesterday (3/24) the Office of the Federal Register made available for public inspection an Interim Final Rule with Request for Comments from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Department of Justice on Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances. The Interim Final Rule specifies the rules that health care providers will need to follow in order to electronically prescribe controlled substances in accordance with the law. Since DEA published the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for electronic prescribing of controlled substance, ONC, CMS, AHRQ and other HHS staff have worked closely with DEA to develop the policies in the Interim Final Rule. The Interim Final Rule is expected to be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, March 31 and will include a 60 day comment period.
We are happy to announce our new online Afia Vendor Selection Tool. This program will help your organization to determine the best Electronic Health Records, Practice Management systems, Disease Management systems, or ePrescribing modules to fit your workflow. Contact us today to find out how the Afia Vendor Selection Tool can help your organization.
Afia has its own booth this year, right behind the YouTube booth. Come talk to Matt or Jeremy to see how Afia can help your organization create an effective long term IT strategy, select the right EHR vendor and system, or provide long term support and management for your technology.
This video captures an amazing demonstration of how health information technology can be used in even the most difficult circumstances. Within 48 hours of the Haiti earthquake, an Israeli team had already set up a state of the art field medical hospital complete with electronic health records, full imbedded scanning equipment, and even a fully functional NICU.
Afia signed a contract this week with Harbor in Toledo, OH to provide an IT strategy that will support Harbor’s organizational plan. Afia will review all of Harbor’s strategic and business goals and develop a 3-5 year IT plan and start an IT governance model that Harbor will use to manage and maintain their ongoing IT Portfolio. Afia will also provide Harbor with a suite of visual tools to manage ongoing IT investments that will help bridge the gap between the business people and the IT people.
