To qualify for "meaningful use" incentives under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), hospitals must use an electronic health record that is certified by an Office of the National Coordinator Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB).
For many hospitals, it's not as easy as it looks. Why? These hospitals have either developed their own EHRs or have pieced together a variety of vendor systems to create a comprehensive solution.
The end result: Each hospital has a unique HIT solution -- and, therefore, unique certification needs. One size does not fit all. Deciphering what needs to be certified within the complex landscape of the hospital's various software solutions (commercial and home-grown) can be tricky.
Our EHR Certification Roadmap for Hospitals can help. The testing program is specifically designed to help hospitals get their software solutions certified – making it possible to move toward meaningful use and the realization of incentive funds. .
The Roadmap includes the following three milestones:
Analysis of Certification Needs. To provide the necessary tailored support, we meet one-on-one with your hospital certification team to analyze and review your unique situation. We will then provide you with a copy of our Hospital Certification Checklist. The checklist will help you identify which of your hospital's self-developed products or commercially acquired EHR solutions have or still require ONC-ATCB certification. With this checklist, you'll discover exactly what you need to do to get your solutions certified.
Bridging the Certification Gap. After you have reviewed the Hospital Certification Checklist, it's time for the certification gap analysis. During this stage, we meet with you to review your gap analysis findings and answer any questions that remain on what needs to be certified within your hospital. By the end of this milestone, your hospital will have a certification strategy and a clear idea of what areas need certification.
Customized Testing. Pre-test materials specific to your certification needs will be distributed and a conference call with a testing proctor will be held to assist you in your preparation for testing. The testing is based upon the standards and certification criteria put forth by ONC and the normative test methods provided by NIST. Based on these criteria and methods, we will walk you through the steps to demonstrate and verify compliance with the ONC testing requirements. Throughout the testing, our testing proctor will take screen shots and request files to verify your performance. Once the testing is complete, our proctor will inform you of any errors or testing criteria failures and, if failures occurred, discuss retesting opportunities.
Roadmap Program. The Roadmap Program fee is $4,000 and includes a copy of the Drummond Group Hospital Certification Checklist, which will assist you in your Certification Gap analysis. A Drummond Group representative will answer questions as you build your roadmap.
Customized Testing. Under this program, our proctors test systems remotely. Complete EHR testing costs $19,500. Module testing costs $7,000 for privacy and security and $2,000 for each module with an upper limit of $19,500 total.
For specific testing and certification rules, please refer to Drummond Group's Testing and Certification Guide
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