The ONC has issued a final rule that abandons the proposed 2015 Edition criteria in favor of extra flexibility in meeting 2014 Edition certification criteria.
The new rule and certification standards replace a February ONC proposal to create voluntary 2015 Edition criteria that were designed to provide vendors flexibility in upgrading their systems while providing a hint at what the 2017 Edition will contain.
The 2015 Edition criteria were widely criticized by stakeholders — the EHR Association said the proposal did not address developers' need to know the final 2017 Edition criteria at least 18 months before compliant products would be expected to be on the market, and the American Hospital Association called on the ONC to focus on ensuring smooth implementations of 2014 Edition products rather than creating new certification editions.
The new rule reflects this industry input by abandoning the 2015 Edition in favor of including a small subset of the 2015 Edition criteria along with a few more options for meeting existing criteria into a new 2014 Edition criteria, called 2014 Edition Release 2.
Examples of the new flexibility in the rule include allowing the splitting of the computerized physician order entry criterion into three certification criteria based on usage (medications, laboratory and imaging) and separating the transitions of care criterion from the clinical document transport method.
“This final rule reflects ONC’s commitment to continually improve the certification program and respond to stakeholder feedback," said Karen DeSalvo, MD, national coordinator for health IT. "It provides more choices for health IT developers and their customers, including new interoperable ways to securely exchange health information. It also serves as a model for ONC to update its rules as technology and standards evolve to support innovation."
More articles on 2014 Edition criteria:
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