Health IT Policy and Regulations

3/2/2010 - Today the Department of Health and Human Services released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Establishment of Certification Programs for Health Information Technology (Health IT). The rule first proposes the creation of a temporary certification program for Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and EHR modules. This serves as a bridge to the second, permanent certification proposal, which establishes detailed guidelines to support an ongoing program of testing and certification of health IT. The meaningful use of certified EHR technology is a requirement for qualifying for incentive payments under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentives program.  The temporary program therefore is critical as it assures the availability of Certified EHR Technology prior to the date on which health care providers may begin demonstrating meaningful use.

2/12/2010 - HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced over $750 million in grant awards as part of a federal initiative to build capacity to enable widespread meaningful use of health IT. Funding is being distributed through two Cooperative Agreement Programs: the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program (HIE) and the Health Information Technology Extension Program (RECs).

1/19/2010 - The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) today announced that both of its electronic health record (EHR) technology certification programs will be updated to conform to the Interim Final Rule (IFR) recently released by Health and Human Services (HHS), and that applications will open on the rule’s effective date of February 12, 2010. Read the CCHIT press release.

12/30/2009 - CMS and ONC Issue Regulations Proposing a Definition of ‘Meaningful Use’ and Setting Standards for Electronic Health Record Incentive Program. Public comments will be accepted until 3/15/2010 through regulations.gov.
To view/download the Meaningful Use NPRM:  PDF [7.38 MB] | HTML
To view/download the Initial Set of Standards and Certification Criteria IFR:  PDF [247 KB] | HTML

Vendor Announcements

3/4/2010 - The AMA announces partnership with Ingenix and Dell to provide physicians with the web based Ingenix CareTracker EHR and Practice Management System. More on the blog...

3/3/2010 - Verizon launches the "Medical Data Exchange" platform developed for the Medical Transcription Service Consortium to enable secure digital sharing of physician notes.

3/1/2010 - Epocrates, Inc. announced today that it will soon enter the electronic health records (EHR) market with the development of a new EHR solution.

3/1/2010 - NextGen Healthcare unveils special offer for rural and community hospitals: Free inpatient Financials with qualifying purchase of inpatient Clinicals.

3/1/2010 - eClinicalWorks^® announced today an option of on-demand deployment of the eClinicalWorks unified electronic medical records (EMR) and practice management (PM) system and complimentary eClinicalWorks solutions. This will remove the wait time for installation by allowing self-activation of the EMR/PM system and add-on services including Patient Portal, Enterprise Business Optimizer (eBO), eClinicalWorks P2P, eClinicalMobile and eClinicalMessenger.

3/1/2010 - Eclypsis Corp. introduces Helios, an open platform for development of third party applications integrating with Eclypsis Enterprise offerings. Eclypsis is collaborating with Microsoft Corporation and other HIT vendors in this offering.