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CCHIT which stands for Certification Commission for Health care Information Technology was established in 2004 to assist physicians in maintaining their electronic health record selection methods. The main idea behind the CCHIT software is to speed up health information technology adoption and produce a reliable and efficient certification process. The reason why CCHIT is so important is because it was developed to assist medical providers with a stream lined method of using electronic software to help them in providing medical treatment and to transfer information in a manner that would be compliant with patients rights.
Most providers when shopping for an EMR (electronic medical records program) or for an EHR (electronic health records program) follow the advice of software sellers since primarily providers are not Information Technology of IT specialists and could get confused with the software and the terminology. According to the purpose stated when CCHIT was initiated, it was supposed to reduce physician risk of their investment in either EMR or EHR software products. The CCHIT software was supposed to make possible the following benefits to physicians:
- CCHIT software was to ensure that personal health information was kept private.
- CCHIT was to make it easier for electronic medical records to correspond with the national health information network also known as RHIOs.
- CCHIT was to make electronic medical record or EMR products desirable by offering incentives to their adoption.
EMR and EHR terminology is used interchangeably and refers to the same type of software product. To become CCHIT certified, EMR products were to show that they were compliant with a list of standards or criteria. There are currently around 220 criteria that an EMR program must be compliant with and more are added each year. For CCHIT compliance, an EMR product must show that its has features which allow access to a patients history, medications and determination of drugs, types of dosing procedures used and if adjusted to a patients size and other conditions, knowledge and protection of patient against dangerous drug interactions and/or allergies, standardized programs to transfer patient information to other providers, machines to look at x rays and other images used for making a diagnosis, storage of patient authorizations or agreements for treatment, adequate storage facility for receiving laboratory results.
Physicians and other health vendors who get CCHIT compliance programs spend over $28,000 for a three year certificate. If the EMR product is found to be CCHIT compliant, it is certified for three years. However, there is an additional charge of $4,800 that must be paid during the second and the third year of certification for licensing fees.
A medical practice should make a list of items that are important to their practice. When agreeing to an EMR product that is CCHIT compliant, the product should offer software that has specific features for the practices' speciality. CCHIT standards are sometimes in conflict with specialty practices, mental health practices and emergency rooms. A provider should find out if the EMR product allows the sharing electronically with physicians, drug stores, laboratories, hospitals. Does the EMR product assist you in keeping tract of life threatening drug reactions? Does the seller of the EMR CCHIT compliant product have a good reputation with other medical people? Finally, a medical practice needs to know if the EMR will interact with Billing and other office software.
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Practice Information
