On an open conference call and interactive web meeting yesterday, nearly 500 attendees dialed in to hear CCHIT announce and explain their newest ONC-ATCB certified 2011/2012 and the “Six steps to ONC-ATCB Certification”. The testing procedures will follow, as required, the NIST procedures. Vendors can find out more about the certification on their web site page “Get Certified“.
The ONC-ATCB Certified 2011/2012 Toolkit will help prepare health IT companies and EHR developers for testing. You can purchase the toolkit for $1000. Pricing will be in tier levels and range from $8K to $34,300K. They want to do the testing in a single day. There can be an accumulative approach where modules can be certified and added to the current certification without having to retest previously certified criteria.
Their trademarked EACHTM (EHR Alternative Certification for Hospitals) program will certify technology in place and as it is installed. This will help with legacy and custom programs that will still be used by hospitals seeking incentive money. During Q&A, CCHIT said that data warehouses currently being used to store and report clinical measures must be certified as a module.
Using the interactive polling option of the meeting, CCHIT asked attending vendors what their plans on certification were. In a quick response from about 250 vendors, 24% said they were intending to certify immediately, 45% said in the next few months, and 8% where not sure. You can download the meeting slides and listen to the call.