One of the most important decisions you will confront over the next few years is which electronic health record (EHR) to adopt for your practice.

Making the wrong decision not only places the $44,000 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) incentive dollars per eligible provider at risk, but could also jeopardize your financial future, as reimbursement shifts from the relative value model of the past to the qualitative value model of the future.

The decision of which EHR to chose is even more complex due to the lack of clarity provided by some vendors about whether their product is “certified,” and what level of certification it has obtained. Verifying EHR certification is an essential first step in your decision-making process.

You can’t begin to qualify for ARRA incentive dollars — let alone achieve “meaningful use” — if the EHR you select does not have a certification number from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology.

Complete EHR certification

One of the key requirements that many decision makers find confusing is the distinction between “modular” and “complete” certified EHRs. If you are unsure of the level of certification of the EHR system you are considering, or whether it is certified at all, check the ONC’s website for the “Certified Health IT Products List” (http://onc-chpl.force.com/ehrcert).

If an EHR is listed as having obtained “complete EHR” in the product classification column, that HER is good to go for a provider practicing in the appropriate practice setting (either ambulatory or inpatient).

For most practitioners in an outpatient office setting, if your EHR is designated “complete EHR – ambulatory,” you know it’s certified for ARRA incentives by the ONC.

Check your version number

Once you have determined that your EHR is complete, check the version number of your product. Look at the product version number column and make sure the version you’re using, or considering purchasing, matches the certified version.

If it’s not, upgrade your software. This is because the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as a part of ARRA, meant that additional functionality had to be added to virtually every EHR on the market — and that means upgrades to include that functionality in your practice.

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