This past Monday, Drummond Group, Inc. announced that it intended to apply to become an HHS-approved EHR certifying body.
It’s not clear that HHS will approve Drummond for this purpose. Come to think of it, we’re just 14 months away from Meaningful Use Bonanza Days and HHS hasn’t bothered yet to tell us how it plans to evaluate such applications.
And if Drummond were approved, there’s no guarantee it will be an effective provider of EHR certification services.
So why in the world has Drummond’s announcement generated such intense interest in EHRland over the last 2 days? Let us count the ways!
Until Monday’s announcement by Drummond, CCHIT had been the only game in town, and many folks had grown weary of its act. These people felt CCHIT had taken advantage of a policy vacuum created by ONC’s eerie silence since it announced plans to outsource the job of certifying EHRs to multiple agencies.
CCHIT had—it seemed to many—taken to scaring folks (“act now, before it’s too late!”), and muddying the waters with "partial certifications" against Meaningful Use criteria that have yet to be approved by ONC.
That behavior is lamentable since CCHIT has no track-record in promulgating outcomes-oriented certification criteria of the sort contemplated by ONC, much less certifying against them.
It is far from clear that an agency which has trained its workforce to implement structure-based certification criteria can march in a new direction without missing a beat.
And CCHIT continues to be plagued by perceived conflicts of interest since some of its board members are senior executives of the very EHR companies it is supposed to certify.
Thankfully, Drummond is much more than an unknown alternative to CCHIT. It has been in business twice as long, is free from conflicts of interest (so far as we know), and has achieved a good reputation in interoperability/conformance testing and certification.
Drummond already works with standards groups, software and firmware vendors, and industry groups to achieve interoperability, just like it would need to do in the EHR space. It “has been supporting Fortune 500 industries and government by certifying the transfer, identity and cybersecurity of their internet information flow over the last ten years,” according to CEO Rik Drummond.
EHR certification would be “a natural extension of our testing program,” he added.
In addition, Drummond has experience working with the Feds. HHS can check its references with the Centers for Disease Control, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the General Services Administration, which should give it (and EHR vendors) considerable comfort.
At the very least, the appearance of a handsome man on a white horse should cause CCHIT to reconsider its onerous pricing and beef-up its responsiveness to vendors who, lest they forget, do pay their bills.
And who knows, Drummond’s announcement might prompt other potential EHR certifying agents to get in the game. The JCAHO and NCQA appear to have the chops in this regard. We hope they consider the opportunity.
In Monday’s press release, Drummond indicated that its interest in the new venture had initially been sparked by numerous, unsolicited approaches from the EHR vendors themselves. That comes as no surprise.
Glenn Laffel MD, PhD
Sr. Vice President, Clinical Affairs, Practice Fusion
It’s not clear that HHS will approve Drummond for this purpose. Come to think of it, we’re just 14 months away from Meaningful Use Bonanza Days and HHS hasn’t bothered yet to tell us how it plans to evaluate such applications.
And if Drummond were approved, there’s no guarantee it will be an effective provider of EHR certification services.
So why in the world has Drummond’s announcement generated such intense interest in EHRland over the last 2 days? Let us count the ways!
Until Monday’s announcement by Drummond, CCHIT had been the only game in town, and many folks had grown weary of its act. These people felt CCHIT had taken advantage of a policy vacuum created by ONC’s eerie silence since it announced plans to outsource the job of certifying EHRs to multiple agencies.
CCHIT had—it seemed to many—taken to scaring folks (“act now, before it’s too late!”), and muddying the waters with "partial certifications" against Meaningful Use criteria that have yet to be approved by ONC.
That behavior is lamentable since CCHIT has no track-record in promulgating outcomes-oriented certification criteria of the sort contemplated by ONC, much less certifying against them.
It is far from clear that an agency which has trained its workforce to implement structure-based certification criteria can march in a new direction without missing a beat.
And CCHIT continues to be plagued by perceived conflicts of interest since some of its board members are senior executives of the very EHR companies it is supposed to certify.
Thankfully, Drummond is much more than an unknown alternative to CCHIT. It has been in business twice as long, is free from conflicts of interest (so far as we know), and has achieved a good reputation in interoperability/conformance testing and certification.
Drummond already works with standards groups, software and firmware vendors, and industry groups to achieve interoperability, just like it would need to do in the EHR space. It “has been supporting Fortune 500 industries and government by certifying the transfer, identity and cybersecurity of their internet information flow over the last ten years,” according to CEO Rik Drummond.
EHR certification would be “a natural extension of our testing program,” he added.
In addition, Drummond has experience working with the Feds. HHS can check its references with the Centers for Disease Control, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the General Services Administration, which should give it (and EHR vendors) considerable comfort.
At the very least, the appearance of a handsome man on a white horse should cause CCHIT to reconsider its onerous pricing and beef-up its responsiveness to vendors who, lest they forget, do pay their bills.
And who knows, Drummond’s announcement might prompt other potential EHR certifying agents to get in the game. The JCAHO and NCQA appear to have the chops in this regard. We hope they consider the opportunity.
In Monday’s press release, Drummond indicated that its interest in the new venture had initially been sparked by numerous, unsolicited approaches from the EHR vendors themselves. That comes as no surprise.
Glenn Laffel MD, PhD
Sr. Vice President, Clinical Affairs, Practice Fusion
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