EHR Association Calls 2015 Criteria Too Disruptive

In a letter to National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology Karen DeSalvo, MD, the Electronic Health Record Association argues that ONC's proposed Voluntary 2015 Edition Electronic Health Record Certification Criteria rule will cost too much, will disrupt progress and simply isn't "necessary or workable."

Responding to ONC's notice of proposed rulemaking first announced back in February, the EHR trade association, representing some three-dozen companies, offered its thoughts on both the substance of the proposed 2015 rules and the first hints of potential certification criteria for 2017. The thrust of the vendors' concerns: "More frequent certification is not desirable and would be costly."

When the rules were first proposed, ONC touted them as a new way of doing things – ostensibly a more nimble approach, characterized by more frequent, but more incremental, rulemaking. The certification criteria reflected the agency's commitment to "efficiently responding to stakeholder feedback," said DeSalvo in a press statement...