ARRA: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also called “The Stimulus Package” or “The Stimulus Bill.” Of the $850B in the bill, $51B is pegged for the health care industry and $19B of that will be used to incent medical practices to adopt EMRs/EHRs.
CCHIT: the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology is a private organization that certifies EMRs and EHRs based on 475 criteria spanning functionality, interoperability and security. CCHIT does not evaluate ease of use of products, financial viability of the company offering the software; or the quality of customer support offered by the software vendor. Whether or not CCHIT will be THE certifying organization to approve “qualified EMRs” will be announced at the end of the year. (Can be pronounced “SEA-CHIT” or each letter can be pronounced as in “C.C.H.I.T.”)
Comparative Effectiveness: Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) compares treatments and strategies to improve health. For CER, HITECH provides $300M for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, $400M for the National Institutes of Health, and $400M for the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. (more…)
An excellent article on EHRs and CCHIT was pointed out to me recently and I thought I’d pass it along to my readers. To answer the question “What is CCHIT?”, the site SoftwareAdvice says this:
CCHIT is a private, non-profit organization formed to certify EHRs against a minimum set of requirements for functionality, interoperability and security. It was founded in 2004 by three industry associations ( HIMSS, AHIMA and the Alliance (no longer in operation.) It was subsequently funded further by the California Healthcare Foundation and a group of payers (e.g. United HealthGroup), providers (e.g. HCA) and software vendors (e.g. McKesson). In 2005, CCHIT was granted a $2.7 million contract by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support its mission. A number of other medical associations have since supported CCHIT. Despite the HHS contract, CCHIT is not an extension of the federal government.
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Okay, I admit it. I am a Geek. I was so happy to be attending my first conference at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, Washington, that they didn’t even have to really impress me.
But they did.
I can’t say I was agog at the actual Conference Center; although everything is well-done, it is also simple and unassuming. I was very agog at the people who presented at the Health Users Conference (HUG, which is a users group alliance program sponsored by HIMSS), and with the Christmas morning of information that rained down on my head at the Developer track I chose to attend (other track choices were IT Pro, Health Plans, and Clinical Informatics.)
I have lots and lots I want to report on from the conference and will be doing so over the next few weeks:
* Interview with Bill Crounse, MD on what Microsoft has to offer the private medical practice and his predictions for the future of EHR pricing
* Interview with Melissa Markey, healthcare attorney specializing in technology on why practices come to her for advice and counsel
* Some fascinating demos of products being created with MS technology
* Some interesting perspectives of MS people and my brief experience with the MS culture
* An eye-witness report on “Surface” and how it will be used in healthcare (it went on sale today but I failed to bring my checkbook with me and my cards are all maxed out)
* Heard while at MS: some very interesting statements that I didn’t expect to hear
* My own wild ideas for my practice after being exposed to some gee-whiz products at MS
But first, back to work and the real world tomorrow, then some vacation time to spend with my daughter who’s visiting from 3,000 miles away, and hopefully, some serious posting on my blog, which is about to change from “healthpromeme.com” to “managemypractice.com.” Either name will work.
