GE health record system certified

Washington - The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has certified GE Healthcare's Centricity Physician Office system as the first electronic health record (EHR) software shown to support doctors who wish to pursue the NCQA/American Diabetes Association Diabetes Physician Recognition Program (DPRP).

To qualify for DPRP recognition, physicians are required to pull a random sample of their patient files and calculate the percentage of those patients who received recommended screening exams (such as eye exams and blood pressure checks) and had certain key clinical outcomes (such as cholesterol and blood sugar levels) in a healthy range.

Doctors who meet established performance thresholds earn recognition. EHR systems are certified by processing a series of random test cases and comparing their output to the expected results based on DPRP requirements. Compatible EHR software can substantially streamline the data gathering process and help physicians compute preliminary results for comparison to the thresholds for recognition.

The Physician Recognition Software Certification program currently assesses EHR systems for their compatibility with the DPRP; however, it does not certify other areas of EHR performance, such as interoperability or security, and is not an audit of the validity of medical record data. In the future, the program may be expanded to include testing for compatibility with the NCQA/American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Heart/Stroke Recognition Program and NCQA's Physician Practice Connections program.