5th Wave Now Released for Public Review and Comment
On Tuesday, September 4th, the Health Information Technology: Standards, Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria for Electronic Health Record Technology, 2014 Edition; Revisions to the Permanent Certification Program for Health Information Technologyfinal rule was published in the Federal Register.
SUMMARY: With this final rule, the Secretary of Health and Human Services adopts certification criteria that establish the technical capabilities and specify the related standards and implementation specifications that Certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) Technology will need to include to, at a minimum, support the achievement of meaningful use by eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs beginning with the EHR reporting periods in fiscal year and calendar year 2014. This final rule also makes changes to the permanent certification program for health information technology, including changing the program’s name to the ONC HIT Certification Program.
DATES: These regulations were effective October 4, 2012. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in the rule was approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of October 4, 2012.
Since September 7th the ONC has been releasing waves of draft Test Procedures and applicable test data files for the 2014 Edition EHR Certification Criteria for public review and comment. Each of the draft sets will remain in public review and comment periods for two week from the release date. For details on the test procedures and data files see the ONC’s 2014 Edition Draft Test Methods page.
| Wave | Dates | Criterion |
| One | Released: 9/7/2012 Comment End: 9/21/2012 | CPOE Vitals, BMI, growth charts Problem list Med list Med allergy list Drug formulary checks Smoking status Patient ed resources Inpatient advance directives Auto log-off Integrity Accounting of disclosures |
| One | Released: 9/11/2012 Comment End: 9/25/2012 | Immunization Information Transmission to Immunization Registries |
| Two | Released: 9/14/2012 Comment End: 9/28/2012 | Criterion |
| Three | Released: 9/21/2012 Comment End: 10/5/2012 | Drug-drug/allergy interaction check Clinical decision support Image results Inpatient eMAR Clinical information reconciliation Ambulatory clinical summary |
| Four | Released: 9/28/2012 Comment End: 10/12/2012 | Data portablility Authentication Auditable events and tamperresistance Audit reports Amendments End-user device encryption Ambulatory secure messaging Transmission to public health agencies – syndromic surveillance Safety-enhanced design |
| Five | Released: 10/18/2012 Comment End: 11/1/2012 | Transitions of care – create and transmit transition of care/referral summaries Electronic prescribing View, download, and transmit to 3rd party Inpatient setting only-transmission of reportable laboratory tests and values/results |
Comments and suggestions should be submitted to ONC.Certification@hhs.gov. All submissions should include “2014 Test Methods” in the subject line. ONC will review and consider all public input, but will not publish the deliberation results. After draft Test Procedures have been through the public comment and review process, ONC will revise and finalize them. The final set of Test Methods is expected to be available for use in testing and certification in early 2013.