Embattled EHR vendor eClinicalWorks has circulated a letter to its customers outlining seven known parts of its software that it said could present an EHR certification issue.

Healthcare IT News obtained a copy of the letter, which also outlines what eClinicalWorks has done about each issue since its landmark $155 million False Claims Act settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in late May.

The first issue is “The username field in the access logs may display as blank.” eClinicalWorks said it resolved this problem within the upcoming Q2-2017 Mandatory Patch and it recommended that users running the V10-SP1-C and V10-SP2 editions should update to the patch when it becomes available. Hospitals and medical groups using earlier iterations should update to the latest general release and then accept the patch.

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Second, “the Modified By field on the patient’s Problem List may display as blank.” The company also will resolve this issue, which occurs randomly, with the upcoming Q2 mandatory patch and, as such made the same recommendations as the first issue in terms of installing the patch or updating to the most current edition and accepting it in the process.

The recommended user actions get a bit more complex for the third issue, “Social history structured data discrepancy.” eClinicalWorks described the risk as a failure of social history data entries to update in the Progress Notes table for calculating social history measures for inactive programs on the back end. While installing the mandatory patch will fix the issue moving forward, the company also created a report containing patient records affected by this. “Once the patch has been accepted and installed, this report can be accessed form the Reports menu > Report Console. The Structured Social History Report is located under Advisory Reports.” Naturally, the company recommends users run the report and use the findings to identify patients with such discrepancies — and when such discrepancies are found update accordingly.

In a vein similar to the preceding problems, the fourth issue, “imported CCD files do not display in patient documents preview,” occurs when CCD file sheets do not align with eClinicalWorks style sheet. The mandatory Q2-2017 patch will fix this problem, and the company said it created “a style sheet to display the CCD files in Patient Document preview pane.”

That brings us to the fifth issue: “Incorrect issue date on the Drug Interaction window” and the letter notes that only the browser edition of V10-SP2 is susceptible. User action recommendations are the same to either patch current versions or update and, in so doing, accept the patch.

[Also: DOJ will probe more EHR vendors for false claims, sources say]

Another issue, the sixth, also resides only within the browser version. “Printing Rx Education is missing in patient logs,” affects meaningful use Objective Measure 6 and will be corrected in the upcoming mandatory patch. “Until the patch is released for the browser instance, it is recommended that the practice print these materials from the executable .exe/desktop icon,” the letter said. “Rx Education printed from the Treatment windows or Common Send button in the executable instance does display in the Patient Logs.”

The seventh and final issue: “Printing patient education missing in patient education logs,” is also only found in the browser version and pertains to meaningful use Objective Measure 6. 

eClinicalWorks did not say in the letter when the Q2-2017 mandatory patch will become available and did not respond to queries asking for that date as of press time. 

Twitter: SullyHIT
Email the writer: tom.sullivan@himssmedia.com

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