HealthMEDX

Lessons Learned during CCHIT Certification

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By Beth Ann Muthig, Product Analyst for HealthMEDX  

By now you have heard the wonderful news that HealthMEDX Version 7.1.10 has received Full Product Certification by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) and for components for the ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 Certification of both eligible provider and hospital.  The criteria support the Stage 1 meaningful use measures requirement to qualify eligible providers and hospitals for funding.  This funding is not currently available for post acute care. 

About three years ago, my boss said, “We have this project for you, you will love it; it will only take about one year and only about 15 % of your time, a walk in the park”.   Well, it has been more like hiking the Appalachian Trail, which can be done by one person but much more rewarding surrounded by a great group of hikers!

Let me tell you about our trailblazers and the human side of our successful certification process.   Certification was much more than just one team effort to prepare for this process; it was an effort that involves everyone who “touches” our product:  every Vision user, every HealthMEDX employee and our Certification Managers from CCHIT   played a role in bringing this project to such a successful conclusion.  It was more than two years in the making, more than 5200 development hours, and more than 1400 hours of review, testing and dress rehearsals for the actual days of testing.  I had the pleasure of shepherding HealthMEDX through the certification process from the early planning stages to post inspection with our wonderful team.  It was certainly a life challenging event.  One of my proudest moments was our day of actual testing; our core team of presenters was absolutely on script and made us all very proud at HealthMEDX to be represented by such fine individuals.   

What were our top 10 lessons learned through this process?

1.  Take the process very seriously- it is not easy.  Every round of CCHIT certification criteria, every NIST procedure for meaningful use bore close watching; every iteration had some material change that created a new development requirement.  Some were minor tweaks, some required major rewrite of a component of our product, and some required new functionality that did not exist two years ago.
2. Take opportunities to educate.  We continue to educate the acute care world on terminology and concepts used in the post acute world, from concepts of integrated product line that serve both the needs of a continuing care retirement community with both home health and skilled nursing, to simple terms such as problem list in acute world is called diagnosis list in the post acute world. 
3. Security testing is demanding. The security and interoperability were some of the more rigorous aspects of certification from documenting all the detail we use to protect data in transit to demonstration.  Clinical team members went from knowing how your heart works to knowing how to generate encryption hashes! 
4. Read the fine print.  Testing procedures and interpretation of these testing procedures was critical; this impacted the dress rehearsals on our perceptions that we were showing the product correctly.
5. Spend your time wisely.  Time management of all the individuals contributing to the project was extremely important to allow timely follow up on specific expectations during this incredibly challenging project. 
6. Educate on the fine print.  Detailed training guides with the new functionality were critical to the end user including rational for including in the new functionalities, such as Medication Reconciliation and the Continuity of Care Document.
7. Rehearse! Dress rehearsal after dress rehearsals set the stage for a seamless test script execution with CCHIT both for CCHIT certification and Meaningful Use.  Being a web-based desktop sharing application with the jurors was something needed practice because there would be no human eye contact to know how we were doing. Often we continued test scripts without any response from jurors. 
8. CCHIT Staff were always there. Responsiveness and the willingness of the staff at CCHIT to engage with us, to get questions answered, and their patience made the process so successful.
9. Keys:  Patience, dedication and professionalism were the winning combination. 
10.  Deep Breath and get ready for 2013/2014 Testing!