ehr onc final certification - Department of Health Care Services

standard for certain purposes. In some cases, this balancing has required the
adoption of certification criteria that requires certain EHR technology to be
capable of receiving electronic health information formatted according to a
standard that it is not natively capable of generating. For example, with respect to
patient summary records, we have adopted the Continuity of Care Document and
Continuity of Care Record standards as alternatives. As a condition of
certification, section 170.304(i)(1) provides as an additional requirement that
upon receipt of a patient summary record formatted in the alternative standard, the
EHR technology must be capable of displaying the patient summary record in
human readable format. We believe this final rule correctly balances at this stage
of EHR adoption our goal of promoting interoperability with the HIT industry's
ability to comply with the certification criteria and its need for flexibility.
Consistent with our long-term goals for interoperability, we anticipate that this
balance will need to change as the HIT industry migrates to single specific
standards for particular purposes.
• Minimum Code Set Standards. As previously discussed in the Interim Final Rule,
we adopted several minimum code set standards. It is important to note that these
code set standards set the floor, not the ceiling, for testing and certification. If,
and when, the Secretary accepts a newer version of an adopted minimum standard
code set, the Secretary will, in effect, raise the ceiling for what is permitted for
testing and certification as well as whether Certified EHR Technology can be
upgraded to that newer version without adversely affecting the Certified EHR
Technology’s certified status. For context purposes we repeat a portion of the
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