By Molly Merrill, Healthcare IT News

The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) announced Tuesday the launch of its new EHR certification program for hospitals, which has been successfully piloted at three U.S. medical centers.

The EHR Alternative Certification for Hospitals (EACH) is an ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification program for installed hospital EHR technology. CCHIT piloted EACH at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston; Huntington Hospital, Pasadena, Calif.; and NYU Langone Medical Center, New York City.

"The EACH program is being piloted in three hospitals, and we've gotten very positive feedback on the quality and helpfulness of the tools we offer to hospitals seeking certification," said Alisa Ray, CCHIT executive director. "With EACH, hospitals can be assured that they meet a critical first step in qualifying for ARRA funds and that their EHR technology is prepared to support the achievement of meaningful use by clinicians."

"Hospital CIOs should take certification very seriously " it's not easy," said John D. Halamka, MD, MS, chief information officer, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "The educational materials and staff of the ONC-ATCB make a huge difference. I relied on CCHIT staff to guide me through the process and CCHIT inventory tools and test scripts to make the process as easy as possible."

The EACH program, relying on required ONC criteria and NIST test procedures and tools, offers:

• A series of self-paced, online learning programs designed to prepare EACH program applicants for testing and certification.
• Online inventory and self-assessment tools developed to help hospitals evaluate how their installed EHR technology measures up to ONC's criteria and standards.
• Additional hands-on support provided by CCHIT's EACH program staff and access to an online community of other hospitals participating in the EACH program.

"Huntington Memorial Hospital's commitment to 'Right Care, Right Place, Right Time' led us to implement a variety of technologies from several vendors," said Rebecca Armato, executive director, Physician and Interoperability Services, Huntington Hospital. "EACH is helping us determine if we have the right mix of applications to not only qualify for ARRA funds, but also to go beyond meaningful use to deliver meaningful value to our community, our patients, our physicians and our organization."

Karen Bell, MD, CCHIT's chair, said the organization is also developing a similar program for physicians and ambulatory care providers that have self developed EHR technology. She says it is slated to launch in the second quarter of this year.

"The EACH program provides a structured approach which is critically important to an efficient certification process; however, it also helps us understand the challenges in meeting the ONC criteria," said Paul Conocenti, senior vice president, vice dean, and chief information officer at NYU Langone Medical Center. "In many ways our EHR systems reflect our operation use. The tools, process, and people of this program highlight critical areas where software may fall short, and where our operational workflow will be impacted."

For example, he said, "adding a few fields to capture data for quality reporting is much easier to add to software then it is to meaningfully add to the complex workflows used at an academic medical center."