Friday, April 26, 2013

HHS Strikes EMR Vendor For Non-Compliance

One of the points consistently made in our reports on EMR (we've just published EMR 2013) is that the government incentives for EMR are no 'Cash for Clunkers' type program.   CMS does not pay doctors merely to buy programs, they have to show usage.  And the EMR Vendors that certify their programs can meet the usage requirements are subject to regulation.  

Yesterday HHS backed up its certification with action against a vendor EHR Magic Two electronic health records, previously certified as products to be used as part of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs, have had their certifications revoked. Farzad Mostashari, M.D., the national coordinator for health information technology, announced today that the products do not meet standards and providers cannot use these products to meet the requirements of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive programs.

EHRMagic-Ambulatory and EHRMagic-Inpatient, both developed by EHRMagic Inc. of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., no longer meet the EHR certification requirements. The EHRs must be certified by a certification body (ACB) authorized by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) before regaining certification.

“We and our certification bodies take complaints and our follow-up seriously. By revoking the certification of these EHR products, we are making sure that certified electronic health record products meet the requirements to protect patients and providers,” said Dr. Mostashari. “Because EHRMagic was unable to show that their EHR products met ONC’s certification requirements, their EHRs will no longer be certified under the ONC HIT Certification Program.”
Obviously these vendors will suffer a bit (EHR Magic is not one of the top vendors in Kalorama Information's market research report) but users who purchased the system also suffer, as they now have a non-compliant product and cannot obtain incentive payments based on usage of an EHR Magic product, unless the vendor can be re-certified.  This will mean more expenditure for those physicians who use this system.