Home Forums Discussions General Discussion "Meaningful Use of EHR"

I appreciate the hard work of the AC team for jumping through the hurdles at CCHIT. Looks like AC V5 will be CCHIT certified. However, Washington is not going to use the CCHIT certification as a trade mark for "meaningful use of EMR". The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC)just defined "meaningful use" in July. The recommendations were send over to CMS that will finalize the rules and regulations for physician offices to follow in order to get bolus and decrease future cut of reimbursement. We can find the ONC recommendations for hospital and physician offices at:
http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/serv...Meaningful%20Use%20Matrix%2007162009.pdf

I would really appreciate if our AC team can help all of us to jump through these hurdles again. I also would see more discussions on how to achieve the goals in the office.

I think that many different opinions are still being bantered about what is "certified" and "meaningful use." My conversations with Jon have made it clear to me that he is workng hard to jump through as many hoops as he can. I know there are people here who hate CCHIT, but there are also many people who have lots of knowledge who feel that CCHIT certification of some type will be adopted as "certified".

Version 5 has already received CCHIT provisional certification and from conversations with Jon he just needs to finish up install issues and final touches - once it is in operation for some defined length of time in a "real office" then full certification will be granted. I don't think any of us really appreciate the amount of finishing touches that entails with the fact that AC works on so many different configurations/levels of computers. It would be much easier if Jon locked us into one computer, one server,etc - it would be miserable for all of us and would destroy the functionality of AC for most of us, but it would be easier for him.

Version 5 was CCHIT certified May 29, 2009.

http://www.cchit.org/products/2008/ambulatory/906

Maybe the boys at AC will have this version out in Sept or Oct? Has anyone heard?

Right now, the issue is no longer CCHIT. The quidelines from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC)has now defined "meaningful use of EMR" in July. The guidelines lay out Washington's demand for office practices and hospitals compliance. Most of the hospitals are trying to bring their EMR system up to the standard. I hope AC can also follow the road map and help us to meet the standard before the deadlines.
Please check the site: http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/serv...eaningful%20Use%20Matrix%2007162009.pdf. The document is simple to understand but the goals are difficult to achieve.

I have had a fair number of conversations with Jon, as well as e-mails, user board postings and I think he has every intention of doing all that he can to make AC meet whatever requirements are needed. I must admit that after reading the above matrix I wonder if any software can do the things they require in the 2011 requirements, much less the 2013 issues.