About the Author

Sheldon Needle is President of CTSGUIDES.COM, a free web site offering reviews, ratings, tools, and expert advice to help companies select software. Sheldon is a former CFO, consultant and software designer who has published more than 20 guides on software selection.

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The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHITSM) is a recognized medical software standards certification body that is an independent not-for-profit organization which sets the standards for electronic health records software (EHR).  In order to qualify for this certification, there are many criteria that vendors of EMR software have to meet, and there is a very large payout that vendors have to make for the certification — $28,000 plus, and then a yearly maintenance fee for certification.

CCHIT was founded and funded by industry associations, and by seed money from HHS. In addition, many large vendors themselves are helping to fund CCHIT.

Many software buyers are using CCHIT verification to decide which software to buy. However, there may be many credible vendors that are not spending the money on CCHIT certification, and still maintain the standards that CCHIT certification sets.

Then, too, setting a standard for specs on an EHR system does not mean that a system delivers a quality product or produces credible results as a result of that spec. CCHIT certifies the presence of a function within the EMR software or EMR software.  But it does not say anything about the success of that function from a usability or patient perspective.

Larger vendors are able to offer various types of stimulus packages and discounts to promote the use of their EHR software.  For instance, GE is now offering no-interest loans to doctors who want to purchase their EHR product, the Centricity EHR system. GE has just announced that Centricity has received CCIT Certification.   Will CCHIT certification become a kind of licensing that is necessary to sell medical practice management software?

The medical software industry is a young industry within the IT field.  The value of its new efforts at self-regulation through CCHIT and government oversight and incentives coupled with stimulus benefits have yet to be measured.