The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) filed comments with the Office of the National Coordinator on the Interim Final Rule regarding the initial set of standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for EHR technology.
In its comments, CHIME stresses the importance of certification for supporting providers’ efforts to achieve meaningful use, saying it gives “healthcare providers a degree of assurance that the products they purchase will perform as promised,” adding that “certification is meant to support providers, not pose an additional burden.”
The organization places most of the responsibility on vendors that develop IT products, and is urging ONC to provide more lead time as it creates future certification criteria. CHIME is also asking for further clarification on ONC’s interim final rule, particularly in how certification will apply to organizations that use multiple clinical systems.
CHIME also wants ONC to support a single standard for patient summary records. For reporting quality data, CHIME advises against using the CMS Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) 2008 Registry XML Specification, and instead suggests the continued development of quality data reporting standards, which are in process by HL7.
CHIME seeks a standards-based approach for submitting data to public health agencies, and addresses the critical privacy and security issues, particularly in the areas of encryption and data verification. To view the organization’s comments on the IFR, please click here.
