A healthcare IT product certification group will for the first time grant certification to electronic health records later this month.  The announcement is slated for July 18. As the certification process moves forward, some EHR vendors say the testing fees are too high.

At least two dozen vendors applied for certification of ambulatory EHRs by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, an organization that won a federal contract to test and certify EHRs and the networks that connect them.

At a CCHIT town hall meeting held at the Towards the Electronic Patient Record conference in Baltimore, some audience members complained that the $28,000 vendors must pay for certification is too high and could drive small electronic health records vendors out of business.

CCHIT Chairman Mark Leavitt has stressed that EHR certification is voluntary. However, several vendors and audience members said they would lose market share if they weren’t certified.

“It’s about as voluntary as income taxes,” said William Sivill of Seiei LLC, a consultant for smaller vendors.

Sivill predicted that if the government tied Stark exceptions to certification, it would in effect become federal law.

The federal government this summer is expected to release exceptions to Stark and anti-kickback rules that would allow hospitals and others to share IT tools with physicians as long as the products meet certain standards.

Leavitt called earlier proposals to make the certification fee based on a sliding scale according to vendor revenue a “nightmare” that was quickly shot down by the healthcare IT vendor community.