The Voluntary 2015 Edition Electronic Health Record Certification Criteria

There's nothing like a crisp New England winter evening, a roaring fire, a cup of cider, and a 242 page Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to fill your Friday night.I've summarized the preamble and all 50 criteria to save you time as you consider the proposals during the 60 day comment period.    Note that no vendor needs to implement 2015 criteria and no provider needs to adopt 2015 certified software, hence the term voluntary.  In many ways, this document is meant to signal what might be included in the 2017 edition that supports Meaningful Use Stage 3.Roughly 60% of the 2014 Edition EHR certification criteria are unchanged in the 2015 Edition. The remaining certification criteria proposals for the 2015 Edition fall into four general categories: clarifications, standards updates, revised approaches, and new certification criteria proposals.As with the Meaningful Use Stage 3 proposals, I'll pose questions, not to be judgmental but to get us all thinking about the scope, timing, and purpose of the certification program over the next several years.The preamble highlights several big ideas -  elimination of the 'complete EHR' designation, separation of content/transport certification criteria, adoption of new standards, more frequent certification rule making, and the need for 2017 edition proposal feedback.Complete EHR was a very confusing concept to me that led many to buy single vendor systems as the "safest" option instead of assembling modules.   I...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs