On their stimulus page they have a section on “connectivity? in which they say http://www.epicsystems.com/stimulus-index.php

In the US our clients care for over 70 million patients with records interoperable via the Care Everywhere network.

What you would assume is that if you bought a CCHIT certified product from the same vendor that you would be able to exchange records.

Unless you buy the interface engine (Care Everywhere) and pay for your development team to link to other local Epic clients you have a stand alone system.

As others have pointed out, it people are worried about the interlocking relationship between vendors via HIMSS and CCHIT why do we have the head of Epic Judy Faulkner sitting on the new ONC advisory board? The new administration is being played both by the old EMR vendors and now by new ones like Microsoft that don’t even have an EMR (they have a platform to host PHRs (personal – that require clinical data from an EMR0 as well as a piece of software that links different systems to one another. (and provides analytic).

I wonder who has a vested interest in not having a single body be responsible for certification just as much as I worry about a vendor driven certification and now policy committee. Then again who else would be qualified to advice HHS then people in the industry? Docs? Analysts who are new to health care? Why is intel and microsoft holding a national tour to “educate providers on how to benefit from ARRA” when they don’t have an EMR?

What for example is the relationship if any between the Obama Administration and IBM?Between Chilmark Research and Microsoft? Is there a strategy to discredit CCHIT as an agency or simply their work?

Do these relationships discredit or strengthen the benefit to consumers? Should banks for example be regulated by people outside of the industry? Did Visa set up its rules for data exchange via an inside industry group? Its great to ask the questions about who’s agenda will get the most coverage. A small nonprofit with a largely volunteer staff like CCHIT or some of the huge IT firms that are trying to enter this space at the last minute? It sure looks like an unfair political campaign to me.

How is healthcare ever going to benefit from the innovation happening everywhere else, if it maintains these costly roadblocks? If someone were to introduce a new system based on a platform that’s new to healthcare, would CCHIT even be able to evaluate it properly?