CCHIT Readies Long Term Care Program

HDM Breaking News, June 30, 2009

A task force of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology has issued recommendations for a new long term and post acute care electronic health records certification program.

The program would cover EHRs in skilled nursing and nursing facilities, Medicare-certified home health agencies, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and long term acute care hospitals.

Recommendations from the task force include identifying core certification criteria common to the four priority care settings, reusing or adapting existing criteria from other CCHIT programs, identifying additional criteria specific to each care setting, and developing a roadmap indicating when the criteria are expected to be implemented.

A newly appointed CCHIT work group on long term and post acute care will start developing certification criteria in mid-July. The recommendations from the task force are available at cchit.org/about/organization/commission/advisory/ltpac.

--Joseph Goedert

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