It is official! We are approved by ONC to be an ATCB. We now have information on pricing and test registration on our website, http://www.drummondgroup.com/html-v2/EHR/
August is here, and the HHS certification program for EHR and Meaningful Use continues to move forward. Last month, Drummond Group submitted its application to be an ONC-ATCB certifying all modules. Part I of the application, which deals with testing and certification quality practices and processes, was submitted on July 20th. We submitted Part II, which is the certification criteria and testing proficiency exam, on July 27th. Based on the guidelines in the ONC Temporary Certification Program ruling, our application will be reviewed within a month so we should hear something back from ONC before the end of August.
Given the work we put into the application and our extensive background in testing and certification, we are confident we will be approved and we are now working on the launch of our EHR testing and certification program. We plan on releasing program information, including pricing and the test registration process, within the next few weeks. Upon our ONC approval, we will begin Meaningful Use stage 1 testing.
The Final Rule on the Certification Program for HIT is now located at this link: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/pdf/2010-14999.pdf.
If you have further questions, please visit our FAQ.
We have received several questions about our EHR Temporary Certification Program. To help you with your questions and interest in our EHR certification program, we have started a FAQ which can you find by selecting the link in our header section above. If you have a question not addressed on the FAQ or want to be put on our email list for EHR Certification updates, please email joani@drummondgroup.com.
We have our Final Rule on the Temporary Certification Program for HIT. It came out on Friday afternoon. It is not yet officially on the Federal Registry, but you can find the rule here on the ONC site: http://www.federalregister.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2010-14999_PI.pdf
The bulk of the document is related to comments made on the NPRM as well as the responses from ONC. While not truly part of the temporary program final rule itself, it is quite valuable in understanding the thinking behind their decisions. In reviewing this, it was apparent how closely ONC read and considered each comment. Some comments were not accepted, but valid reasons were always provided as to why they were not. Other comments did impact changes to the final rule reflecting ONC’s willingness to listen and adjust their direction. They are to be commended for that.
The official Final Rule itself starts on page 183. The Final Rule is largely unchanged from what was published in the NPRM. If you want to see only the changes from the NPRM, go to page 143 and look under the section called Provisions of the Final Regulation. Below are a few of the more important changes made.
* Waiving of the 30-day delay in the effective rule. This is by far the most significant “change” in terms of how it impacts vendors, providers and hospitals. Typical procedure for Final Rules is to have 30-day delay after it is on the Federal Register before it becomes “effective”, but this can be waived in certain situations. What this means practically is that once the Final Rule goes into the Federal Register, say around July 1, the Temporary Certification Program will be active and ONC can begin processing applications from organizations like ourselves intending to be ATCBs. ONC does give themselves 30 days to process and approve the application so you still may not see an ATCB officially testing until possibly August.
* Temporary Certification Sunsets No Earlier than 12/31/11. The NPRM had stated that the Temporary Program ends (and the Permanent Program begins) when there is an accredited ONC-ACB. Now, the Temporary Program is given a clear window of operation through the end of 2011, and it may be extended if an ONC-ACB is not found by then. This gives more stability to the Temporary Program.
* All ATCBs Must Support Remote Testing. The NPRM had previously only required support of testing at the local ATCB facility. Now, remote testing is required for all ATCBs. Remote testing can be done either at the development site (vendor) or deployment site (provider or hospital implementation). Based on our DGI surveys, remote testing was by far the preferred method, and ONC also received the same feedback.
The last day of Spring is officially June 20th as Summer Solstice falls on the 21st. With that, we expect the Meaningful Use and Standards and Certification Criteria Final Rules by the 20th; meaning we will likely see them within the week. Once they are final, the NIST test scripts will soon be updated and moved to final status. DGI has already provided comments to NIST on currently published draft test scripts. It will be interesting to see how much they change once we have our Final Rules.
Thank you for the huge response on our remote vs. onsite testing survey. The overwhelming choice was for remote testing.
The new survey up now: For EHR vendors, will your EHR application be tested as a Complete EHR (covering all the EHR Certification Criteria modules) or a specific, limited set of EHR Modules?
We have added a new feature to our blog. To the right of the blog page, there is a survey box. Periodically, we are going to post different brief questions regarding EHR testing. We are interested in industry feedback on these various questions. Our first survey question is regarding preference for onsite versus remote testing. The Certification Program NPRM indicates both are permitted for an ATCB, but we are curious about your preference.
Please vote and keep checking back for new survey questions. Thanks.
Kyle Meadors, our Director of EHR testing, has accepted an invitation to speak at the World Congress Leadership Summit on Leveraging the Stimulus Funding to Accelerate EHR Adoption He will be speaking on a panel discussion about on-the-ground support for meaningful use of EHRs. Specifically, Mr. Meadors will be explaining how the EHR Certification Program will ensure that Complete EHRs can satisfy the Meaningful Use incentive criteria. If you are going to be at the summit, please take time to stop by and say “hi”.
Today DGI submitted its comments on the NPRM for the Temporary Certification Program (deadline is this Friday). We will also be submitting comments for the NPRM for the Permanent Certification Program at a later date (the deadline for those comments is May 10).
The comments are not yet viewable on the Regulations.gov website, but we have attached the PDF document containing our comments.
If you have any questions on the feedback we gave, or are interested in us elaborating more on one of our points, please let us know through the comment section on this blog and we will be glad to address those. There are a few suggestions we made which I know we want to discuss further her on this blog in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
* * * UPDATE * * *
Our comments have now been posted on the Regulations.gov website.
