The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology has announced that EHR technology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston has been certified as a complete EHR under CCHIT’s new EHR Alternative Certification for Hospitals (EACH), an ONC-ATCB certification program for installed hospital EHR technology.
The EACH program allows medical centers to evaluate how their inpatient technology measures up to meaningful use requirements while also pursuing certification of existing EHR technology not already covered by a vendor certification. BIDMC, the first hospital to be certified, took part in a pilot program prior to the official launch of the EACH program on Jan. 18, 2011.
[The EACH program is one of many from CCHIT. See: CCHIT announces three new certification programs for EHRs.]
“BIDMC, like many academic health centers, has a combination of built and bought technologies that collectively provide interoperability, clinical functionality, and security,” said John D. Halamka, MD, chief information officer at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School and author of the blog, Life as a Healthcare CIO.
“The EACH inspection process was rigorous, requiring us to follow over 500 pages of scripts and implementation guides in a single daylong demonstration," he said. "The staff at CCHIT was remarkable, educating us about the NIST script requirements, emphasizing the need to prepare and clarifying aspects of the NIST scripts that were ambiguous or seemed clinically unusual.”
[Beth Israel Deaconess is consistently recognized for its use of information technology. See: 'Most Wired Hospitals' for 2010 named.]
Certified EHR technology is required for hospitals to qualify for ARRA funding and avoid future Medicare penalties. CCHIT’s EACH certification is a program designed for hospitals that have uncertified legacy software, customized commercial products, or have developed their own EHR systems.
The EACH certification testing relies on standards and criteria developed by Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and testing procedures and tools developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“Our staff enjoyed working with BIDMC in the EACH pilot program,” said Bambi Rose, CCHIT testing and certification program director. “Their participation helped us refine the training and assessment tools that we’ve developed to prepare hospitals for an ONC-ATCB inspection. We’re delighted to see this successful certification as the outcome of their careful preparation using those tools.”
The EACH program offers:
- A series of self-paced, online learning programs designed to prepare EACH program applicants for testing and certification
- Online inventory and self-assessment tools developed to help hospitals evaluate how their installed EHR technology measures up to ONC’s criteria and standards
- Additional hands-on support provided by CCHIT’s EACH program staff and access to an online community of other hospitals participating in the EACH program
CCHIT is developing a similar program for physicians and other ambulatory providers that have self-developed EHR technology. The program will be launched in the second quarter of this year.
