Recently CCHIT has come under fire for being too focused on large proprietary vendors and specifically, its association with HIMSS.
These attacks have gotten so bad that Mark Leavitt has posted a rebuttal, which has generated a tremendous amount of attention over at THCB ( a blog well worth adding to your RSS feed)
Mark raises several good points in defence of his organization, including:
- There is currently no financial relationship between HIMSS and CCHIT
- Vendors who are involved at CCHIT are limited in what seats that can hold and what votes they can make
- CCHIT takes great pains to ensure that it is not biased by vendor ties.
- There is a strict conflict of interest policy in place
Mark is right to point these out, but this misses the heart of the criticisms coming from FOSS and other places.
The problem is not that there ‘sneaky’ influences from HIMSS and Vendors, but rather a simple self-selection bias.
CCHIT is and always has been a monolithic check-list for a Proprietary, Rigid, Overweight, Bloated, Loaded, Expensive, and Massive (or PROBLEM for short) EHR products that allowed out-patient doctors to effectively track and monitor the healthcare of their patients. Most of the ‘founding fathers’ of CCHIT were either vendors with a PROBLEM EHRs or EHR users who had already bought in to the PROBLEM EHR model.
The CCHIT process -is- open to all, it -is- democratic and it does seek to balance the interests of vendor and non-vendor participants. Everything Mark is claiming is right on and it does not matter at all. The participants in CCHIT have all bought into the PROBLEM model. Those of us who have always thought differently than CCHIT have stayed away because it was obvious from the get-go that the certification model put forward by CCHIT was incompatible with our goals.
Right now, CCHIT is taking it from all sides because there are so many people who disagree with some aspect of the PROBLEM model. Practice Fusion wants to see really cheap EHR services like the one that they offer be certified. The ‘Clinical Groupware‘ people want to see the certification of a suite of technologies that may or may not add up to a traditional EHR. The EMR-lite people want to see faster and lighter tools. The PHR people and consumer advocates want EHR systems that empower the patient instead of the provider. The Health 2.0 people want to see completely different models of finance and care become possible. Of course, the FOSS people (like me) want FOSS EHRs to get equal footing.
In defense of CCHIT, Mark and the other members of CCHIT that I have met have bent over backwards to try and see things from the FOSS perspective. They have truly listened and they are starting to understand how different our community really is. I would encourage the members of the other communities to consider working with CCHIT before discounting them. CCHIT needs to be given the opportunity to re-invent itself before it is discounted. The recent press release from CCHIT indicates that it will be establishing town hall meetings for the FOSS community. I am not confident that this will work, but it is an indication that CCHIT is willing to try and see things from a different vantage point.
However, it may be difficult for CCHIT to reinvent itself. Realistically, the PROBLEM EHR vendors and users do not want to see CCHIT supporting very different models then their own. If CCHIT appeases the crazies like me too much, it stands to loose its ‘base’. This is why I believe it is critical that ONC leave the door open to sources of certification other than CCHIT. Doing so keeps the pressure on CCHIT to broaden its certification systems to include very different philophies of Health IT. Without that extra pressure, there is no way for CCHIT to act in a way that is not in the direct interests of its current PROBLEM membership.
-FT
(update 6-03-09 Dr. Kibbe pointed out to me that the proper term was ‘clinical groupware’ and not health groupware. He also pointed me to an excellent post by Adam Bosworth defending exactly that perspective, so I linked it in. Also correct some spelling errors)
Fantastic post. It’s often a challenge for me to hear, “Physicians are technology averse.” My take, they’re BAD technology averse or better – they’re stupidity averse. I’ve been to practices with nuclear particle accelerators to treat cancer, advanced blood chemistry, MRI, Digital Xray, Ultrasound… all very light on technology of course.
The market needs to continue to evolve out of the initial PROBLEM emr that has artificially pent up demand and adoption for too long.
Looking at CCHIT ambulatory requirements from past years, each year they add more requirements to the list. I rarely see anything changed or removed.
Not unlike a software company that adds features of dubious value rather than change or remove existing ones, just so they can justify selling version 10.0, isn’t this an inherent problem with an organization like CCHIT?
While the arguments made about their members potentially buying into PROBLEM EHR model might be also true, it seems like its members will always need to add more requirements to the list in order to justify another version and another year of work.