Hi Gregory:
The cost of CCHIT certification used to cost a total of $28000.00 for the 1st year of certification, with a cost of $4000 to keep the certification active on years 2 and 3; in many situations, s.a. to work in a Stark-relaxation-kickback environment, the vendor had to recertify yearly at $28000.00 a year.
In 2008, the application cost for CCHIT increased and is now $29,000 application plus $6,000 for maintenance for a grand total of $35,000 for the first year, then $6000 a year for the next 2 years if you don't want AC to participate in the Stark relaxation cr*p. (
http://cchit.org/files/certification/08/Forms/CCHITCertified08Handbook.pdf)
The real question is what will AC cost after CCHIT and after the Jet4 back-end gets replaced by an SQL back-end. My guess is that AC may cost up to 5 times more than it does now... watch out what you ask for!
The other question is if there is still going to be an AC version that does not offer these upgrades and is sold still for close to the under-$1000 for a basic license which is what made it famous.
BTW, I am now going to be a columnist at the MD Net Guide magazine which now is sent to over 250000 physician offices. My job will be to discuss these topics in my own regular column, one different topic per issue. I will offer the counter-balance/opposing view to the unfunded mandates being pushed through Congress. In February- the discussion will focus on e-prescribing (a counter to an article that was recently published in the Wall Street Journal). In March? I may discuss the recent HIMSS paper that came out here-
http://www.himss.org/advocacy/d/FAQsHealthIT20081217.pdf . In April? It may be my favorite punching bag topic- CCHIT, and discuss why it should be discontinued. It'll be based on my response to an article that appeared here-
http://histalk2.com/2008/08/27/readers-write-82708/ The "silver lining" about this recession is that it may end up reversing the bastardization of HIT, since nobody will able to afford this stuff! At least I hope to be there to kind of push things along in the right direction. The other thing that will help me is that in the past 2 years, since I practice "inside the Beltway" close to Congress, I had one lobbyist in Congress helping me out; now I have 2, one Republican, one Democrat. That will come in handy... ;^)
In all of this, AC sales should do well.
Cheers,
Al
