Key Elements of Certified Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

Certified EHRs has a number of elements defined by the Office of the National Coordination (ONC) for Health Information Technology. Contrary to expectation of many, the rule of PNC sets a slightly low certification bar, such that it does not need usability testing nor demand full functionalities array which might be essential in healthcare organization practice. However, the certification criteria focus on two functionality elements. One of the main elements is the ability to compute measures defined in the incentive program of EHR. Certified EHR systems need to have a distinct set of record-keeping to establish whether a participant met the required threshold and the actual numbers to be reported for denominators and numerators (American College of Cardiology, 2018). The certified EHR thus must be able to make these computations and participants or users should be in a position to report this information more easily to CMS as needed for the incentive program of EHR.

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Another required functionality element in EHRs certification is the ability to record when digital health information is deleted, created, accessed or modified and the ability to show what happened and who performed the specific act. Thus, the key elements of certified EHRs are highly based on the two main functionalities which are basically extra functionality aspect from a normal uncertified system. The computation of measure considered in the provision of incentive in away ensures that all core objectives of EHRs are certified in a healthcare organization (American College of Cardiology, 2018). 

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