HIT Leaders React to Proposed EHR Testing and Compliance Rule

She added that the announcement is "an important step that will reduce the uncertainty that the healthcare community has experienced while awaiting this additional information."

A modular approach
The modular approach will be helpful to health systems that have hospitals on several different EHR systems as well as those who use different vendors to manage different types of health information. "Many of us rely on more than one vendor," said Schwartz. His practices' main EHR vendor is GE Healthcare, but it also uses other, smaller vendors, including a third-party image management vendor.

"That provides an opportunity for the smaller players to contribute," said Luigi Leblanc of Solink, a Silver Silver Spring, MD-based vendor of MyOfficeLink, who was participating in the HIMSS "Interoperability Showcase," a real-time demonstration of standards-based interoperable health IT systems. "Because what you now have is no matter where you are in the chain of this market, you can in fact certify those modules as opposed to waiting until you meet complete meaningful use to be certified. So I think that's great. I think that's really considerate of the ONC," he said.

"To the credit of the health information technology standards panel, working on standards with industry, they've come out with standards defining meaningful use and I think that's going to help in terms of information exchange. And I think that's evident when you look at how large this showcase is compared to two years ago. I think people are in the spirit . . . of sharing and that's because government has had a role in helping to promote fair exchange."