JAN 14, 2013 12:05pm ET

ONC Authorizes Four Entities as Stage 2 EHR Certifiers

JAN 14, 2013 12:05pm ET

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has authorized four organizations to certify electronic health records under the Stage 2 meaningful use program, known as the 2014 Edition of certification.

ONC in August 2012 “named” five organizations for what amounted to provisional Stage 2 certifiers after the firms had been vetted by and received accreditation from the American National Standards Institute as appropriate candidates. Next, the organizations had to have their testing programs accredited under criteria created by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology.

Four of the organizations--all of whom are certifying veterans in Stage 1--have received testing accreditation and are the first certifying entities ONC now has authorized for Stage 2. They are the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, Drummond Group, ICSA Labs and InfoGard Laboratories.

Orion Register, a newcomer that ONC also named as a certification entity in August pending NIST testing, has dropped out.

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Comments (1)

Is there a easy way to determine which EHRs a particular certify agency has certified and the results of those certifications. The reason I ask, I am assisting a number of small private practicing in implementing EHRs and its clear that there are a number of EHRs that were "certified" for Stage 1 that should not have been (e.g., systems from Allscripts). I have some prospective clients who had already selected and started implementing EHRs but when they got into implementing them found that a number of the functions should not have past - particularly as it relates to data exchange and QM. So I trying to avoid products "certified" by the entity that certified Allscripts, McKesson and other systems. Bottomline,its seems that all the certifying entities are not equal. Given that the ONC will not give exemptions to functionality in "certified" EHRs that are unable to deliver Stage 1 and I suspect Stage 2 functionality, I'm trying to minimize my clients' risks (including future audits by CMS) by avoiding EHRs that are do not meet certification requirements.

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ONC Authorizes Four Entities as Stage 2 EHR Certifiers