Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) was an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the public mission of accelerating adoption of robust, interoperable health information technology in the United States. The Commission certified electronic health record technology (EHR) from 2006 until 2014. It was approved by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as an Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB). The CCHIT Certified program is an independently developed certification that includes a rigorous inspection of an EHR's integrated functionality, interoperability and security using criteria developed by CCHIT's broadly representative, expert work groups. These products may also be certified in the ONC-ATCB certification program.

History
CCHIT was founded in 2004 with support from three leading industry associations in healthcare information management and technology: the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the National Alliance for Health Information Technology (the Alliance). In September 2005, CCHIT was awarded a 3-year contract by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop and evaluate the certification criteria and inspection process for EHRs and the networks through which they interoperate. In October 2006, HHS officially designated CCHIT as a Recognized Certification Body (RCB). In July 2010, HHS published new rules for recognizing testing and certification bodies, scheduled to take effect when it named the new bodies. In September 2010, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) of HHS named CCHIT again under these new rules. CCHIT is an ONC Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB).

Goals

 * Reduce the risk of Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) investment by physicians and other providers
 * Ensure interoperability (compatibility) of HIT products
 * Assure payers and purchasers providing incentives for electronic health records (EHR) adoption that the ROI will be improved quality
 * Protect the privacy of patients' personal health information.

Operations
CCHIT focused its first efforts on ambulatory EHR products for the office-based physician and provider and began commercial certification in May 2006.

CCHIT then developed a process of certification for inpatient EHR products and launched that program in 2007.

CCHIT then assessed the need for, and potential benefit of, certifying EHR for specialty medicine, special care settings, and special-needs populations.

CCHIT, in a collaboration with the MITRE Corporation, also developed an open-source program called Laika to test EHR software for compliance with federally named interoperability standards.

In January 2014, Information Week reported that CCHIT would exit the EHR certification business.

On November 14, 2014, CCHIT ceased all operations.

Announcements of CCHIT Certified Products

 * On July 18, 2006, CCHIT released its first list of 20 certified ambulatory EMR and EHR products
 * On July 31, 2006, CCHIT announced that two additional EHR products had achieved certification.
 * On October 23, 2006, CCHIT released its second list of 11 certified vendors.
 * On April 30, 2007, CCHIT released its third list of 18 certified vendors.
 * On November 16, 2009, CCHIT released its initial draft criteria for Behavioral Health, Clinical Research, and Dermatology EHRs, with expected final publication available July 2010.

Commissioners
The Commission, chaired by Karen Bell, M.D., M.M.S, was composed of 21 members each serving two-year terms.

Stakeholders
Certified EHR products benefit many interested groups and individuals:
 * Physicians, hospitals, health care systems, safety net providers, public health agencies and other purchasers of HIT products, who seek quality, interoperability, data portability and security
 * Purchasers and payers – from government to the private sector – who are prepared to offer financial incentives for HIT adoption but need the assurance of having a mechanism in place to ensure that products deliver the expected benefits
 * Quality improvement organizations that seek out an efficient means of measuring that criteria have been assessed and met
 * Standards development and informatics experts that gain consensus on standards
 * Vendors who benefit from having to meet a single set of criteria and from having a voice in the process
 * Healthcare consumers, ultimately the most important stakeholders, who will benefit from a reliable, accurate and secure record of their health

CCHIT and its volunteer work groups strove to fairly represent the interests of each of these diverse groups in an open forum, communicating the progress of its work and seeking input from all quarters. CCHIT received the endorsements of a number of professional medical organizations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the Physicians' Foundation for Health Systems Excellence and Physicians' Foundation for Health Systems Innovation.

<!-- ==Controversies==

CCHIT as a "Recognized Certification Body"
The collusion of government with the private sector under the umbrella of forming an official "recognized certification body" is worrisome. This collaboration will stifle innovation, markedly decrease competition by smaller vendors with less costly electronic medical record (EMR) products, and add a layer of fees and costs that is unnecessary. The growth of health information technology in the United States was already growing at an in the previous 5 years driven by decreasing EMR prices.

This involvement by government has set up an environment where physician consumers will now have to purchase much higher priced "certified" EMR systems. Abuse will be seen on both ends of this process- on the government side by the use of mechanisms such as In the private sector the large, powerful vendors which control CCHIT from within will profit from the fees paid for certification, and also will profit from the loss of competition from smaller vendors unable to pay for the high cost of certification.

CCHIT blurs the truth of their goals as stated above. Mr. David Merritt, project director at the Center for Health Transformation states that CCHIT should strive "to make the process as easy as possible for people so as not to price out those smaller vendors." Unfortunately, Mr. Merritt’s advice was ignored.

The most important issue that CCHIT is supposed to address, but hasn't (and doesn't plan to address fully through 2008), is interoperability. The Continuity of Care Record (CCR) interoperability standard from ASTM International, is a proven method for sharing a patient’s health information between care providers. The cost for vendors to implement the CCR standard is minimal and already vendors are being verified by entities such as the American Academy of Family Practice. CCHIT instead focuses more on “enterprise” type functionality that would never be used by an individual provider or small group practices. This is especially disturbing when you consider that individual providers and small group practices represent of all practicing physicians.

CCHIT also does not certify an EMR system will be truly functional for the purchasing physician office. It only tests a set of preordained list of features some of which are inappropriate or simply unwanted by the vast majority of purchasing offices. to the growth of HIT. The only real way to increase the use of health information technology is to make EMR systems much less expensive, not by some esoteric certification-based "assurance" theory.

Controversy Over Insider Stakeholders
One of the 3 organizations that incorporated CCHIT, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), is a trade association which comprised 20 of the biggest EMR vendors in the United States when CCHIT was founded. In financial disclosure documents posted it is noted that CCHIT is a not-for-profit LLC owned, operated, and managed by many of the same vendors and affiliated staff. Their own incorporation papers state that: "Any profits that are made by CCHIT are disbursed among the same CCHIT vendor-owners at year's end." An obvious conflict of interest arises for not only suppression of competition but by forcing small business vendors to lose profits by paying large fees that eventually flow to the competition who are the actual owner/operators of the CCHIT organization. For the fiscal year 2006 their own Commission meeting minutes has an income statement: "...we could end up with net income of one million dollars at the end of the fiscal year, which is December [2006]."

It also that HIMSS has in the past made lavish payments to Congressional lawmakers as a powerful lobbyist for the nonprofit CCHIT organization.

Controversy: Future Effect on Competition, EMR Adoption, and EMR Prices
The CCHIT certification process flies against everything that living in the United States stands for- free enterprise, decreased taxes and user fees, increased innovation, increased heterogeneity of choice, and finally the growth of the American HIT industry into world leadership.

The typical CCHIT EMRs are almost twice as expensive as that of non-CCHIT EMRs using an This divide will worsen, as CCHIT will likely end competition from free, open source, and low cost EMR products and will affect the viability of not only small to many mid-level EMR vendors, but also physician offices alike by markedly increasing the cost of HIT. CCHIT has won the backing of big government, of the large insurance industry, and even of a small handful of medical societies. It has been able to collect a large sum of money to conduct its activities. Even with all of this, it's overall survivability still is tenuous. The second phase of certification saw 6 of 17 EMR vendors quit the process. CCHIT must also strive to win over the hearts, minds, and financial support of those physicians who work in small to medium-sized offices in the United States.

Various factors involving the timing, the right players, market history, utility, governance play a key role in the overall enrichment of the standard and certification development. The standardization and certification even though seem to bring uniformity in the EMR development, do not guarantee their acceptability and sustainability in the long run.

The upcoming year (2007) will determine whether vendors and physicians alike are willing to practice under this CCHIT cartel and pay the extra costs associated with certification. Even recently said that "certification will help business. If you don't see an acceleration in the [EHR] market, then we’ve failed.” If this becomes a reality, then a smaller, less onerous to competition, less costly and a fairer system focusing on interoperability verification would most likely become the more accepted and successful process to advance HIT for the healthcare system in the United States.

Important link that discusses controversies further: Retrieved on 2006-10-20. -->