By Steven Posnack, M.S., M.H.S. /Director, Office of Standards and Technology,
Dustin Charles /Public Health Analyst, ONC, and
Wes Barker /Data Analyst
Twitter:@ONC_HealthIT
Have you ever wondered what a health information technology (health IT) developer’s share of meaningful use eligible hospitals looked like compared to its peers? How about the same for eligible clinicians under the Quality Payment Program (QPP)? Well, look no further. Today, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) published two data visualizations that display health IT developers’ progress in certifying to the 2015 Edition certification criteria combined with comparable statistics on the approximate share of eligible hospitals and clinicians who use the developers’ technology.
How’d we do it?
First, we used the subset of 2015 Edition certification criteria required to meet the “Base EHR definition” as a proxy for overall health IT developer certification progress. This subset serves as a good proxy because all eligible hospitals and clinicians must have health IT certified to these criteria in order to ultimately have Certified EHR Technology. Next we matched health IT developers with data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) Medicare EHR Incentive Program attestations to approximate the proportion of all health care providers that use a developer’s certified technology. Through combining this data we are able to visualize the progress of health IT developers toward 2015 Edition certification and the approximate share of their users.
Please be mindful that these “market estimates” do not perfectly capture the entire health IT market. The data presented in these visualizations is limited to just those hospitals and clinicians who have participated in the CMS Medicare EHR Incentive Program. Further, the data does not distinguish between different health IT markets such as those for specialists or those that focus on particular health IT functionalities, such as privacy and security, quality measurement, and health information exchange. Additional details on how we determined our estimates are documented on the data visualizations.
What’s the data show?
Health IT developers have made significant progress toward certifying to the 2015 Edition Base EHR definition criteria. And among those developers that haven’t yet achieved the Base EHR Definition, most are only one or two certified criteria away. Note, not all health IT developers will seek certification to all of the Base EHR definition criteria because they provide more specific services (e.g., quality or public health reporting). Thus for the purposes of this specific visualization their “block” will never be fully shaded even though they may have certified their product to a scope that fulfills their clients’ needs.
Each week, ONC will update the graphics with the latest progress of health IT developer’s attainment of 2015 Edition certification. In addition, each graphic includes a table ensuring all developers have their efforts toward 2015 Edition certification reflected. A complete list of all 2015 Edition certified products can be found on ONC’s Certified Health IT Products List.
This post was originally published on the Health IT Buzz and is syndicated here with permission.