Who will certify first under meaningful use?

One of the most interesting comes from the Clinical Care Collaborative, formed by about 40 companies interested in the issue of clinical groupware, which is at the heart of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) effort.

Now that we have rules and incentives in place for clinical groupware, writes CGC chairman Steve Adams, who gets certified first?

The question is vital. Despite the fact that certification of features has been replaced by meaningful use, hospitals and clinics would still like to be assured that anything they buy is certified, so they can get that sweet, sweet stimulus cash.

With the year-long delay in creating meaningful use rules, vendors don't have much time to be certified before buyers have to prove meaningful use in order to qualify for FY 2011.

So Adams is asking that David Blumenthal's Office of the National Coordinator organize a queue, or at least set up rules for a queue.

Applications should be processed in the order received without regard to whether they are complete EHRs or EHR modules and, in the event of simultaneous submitted applications, the ONC should conduct a randomized and completely fair and transparent method for selecting the order that certifications will occur for these applicants.

This is actually a very big deal, because the moment the queue is opened every vendor will have its application ready, and the order in which software is certified could have a huge impact on who wins and loses in the market.

Much of the controversy over certification before Dr. Blumenthal came to Washington involved links between the certification authority, CCHIT, and the industry's HIMSS trade group. CCHIT is asking to certify again, as is The Drummond Group testing lab.

Adams is asking a good question. How will Dr. Blumenthal respond?