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The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) has announced that GE Healthcare IT’s Centricity Enterprise Version 6.0 is CCHIT Certified, and meets the Commission’s inpatient electronic health record (EHR) criteria for 2007.

Inpatient EHRs are designed for use in acute care hospitals. The Commission – an independent, nonprofit organization – is the recognized body in the United States for certifying health information technology products.

In addition to meeting foundation standards such as security, certified inpatient products are examined for computerized physician order entry (often called CPOE) and electronic medication administration capabilities (often called eMAR), including related clinical decision support. As a CCHIT Certified product, Centricity Enterprise has been tested and passed inspection of 100 percent of a set of criteria for CPOE and eMAR. The Commission focused certification testing on these areas first because they have the lowest rate of adoption in hospitals but are thought to offer the highest value for improvement of care.

“The thorough inspection process ensures that certified products have demonstrated their ability to have a positive impact on the quality and safety of patient care,” said Mark Leavitt, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Commission. “I’d like to congratulate the certified product companies, who now represent the leading edge in advanced EHR products for the inpatient setting.”

The CCHIT Certified mark — a “seal of approval” for EHR products — provides the first consensus-based, government-recognized benchmark for inpatient EHR products. This announcement marks full certification on Centricity Enterprise’s inpatient solution and conditional certification on its ambulatory solution, timed with the first customer installation of Centricity Enterprise’s new ambulatory functionality. By looking to products with the CCHIT Certified seal, acute care providers can reduce their risk in selecting EHR products for CPOE and eMAR.

CCHIT’s certification compliance criteria and its design for a certification inspection process have been thoroughly researched, taking into account the state of the art of EHRs and available standards, and comparing certification processes in other industries and other countries. The inspection process is based on real-life medical scenarios designed to test products rigorously against the clinical needs of providers and the quality and safety needs of healthcare consumers and payers. One script, for example, recreates a scenario of a middle-aged man admitted through the emergency department after sustaining fractures in an automobile accident. The script tests the ability of the EHR to provide clinical decision support during the ordering and administration of medications, and to track whether laboratory and radiology orders have been entered and received.

Source: GE Healthcare

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