CCHIT Names Health IT Veteran To ChairCCHIT Names Health IT Veteran To Chair

Dr. Karen Bell is new chair to the Certification Commission for Health IT, but she isn't a newcomer to the nation's highest levels of health IT leadership.

After a five-month search, CCHIT said Monday it has named Bell its new chair effective April 26. Bell succeeds CCHIT's founding chairman Dr. Mark Leavitt, who is retiring.

Bell, a physician, was part of the original team of advisors working with the nation's first coordinator of health IT, Dr. David Brailer, when President Bush created the sub-cabinet position in 2004.

During the same time that Bell worked with Brailer in the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), the independent, non-profit CCHIT was launched. Since 2006, CCHIT has been the only organization that's been certifying health IT products.

But that will soon change. Under the HITECH provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, multiple organizations will be able to apply for accreditation to certify health IT products for compliance with the federal government's upcoming meaningful use requirements.

Bell is not a newcomer to private-public health IT leadership roles; she is a familiar face at CCHIT. While at ONC, Bell was ONC's representative on CCHIT's board of commissioners from 2006 to 2008.

And now in her new post, Bell is ready to take on the challenges of leading CCHIT into the new landscape of health IT evolution and mass adoption.

"Bottom line is that the certification commission has over the last four or five years been a trusted partner in the delivery system" of health IT systems, said Bell in an interview with information.

Over the last year, CCHIT has introduced new programs that allow certification for modular EHR and home-grown systems for organizations that don't need or use more comprehensive or third-party systems.

"We've learned to be flexible and that's critical as meaningful use evolve," she said.

Yet at the same time, it's important for CCHIT "to ensure that various health IT also meet the more complex needs of delivery systems, including usability and that the systems are a good value," she said.

CCHIT will also work to ensure that its certification processes are efficient, nimble "and not too costly," she said.

The market atmosphere now for health IT has changed greatly compared to when Bell was involved with the first ONC office lead by Brailer.

During that time, President Bush set a goal for most Americans to have an electronic health record by 2014, but there were no federal mandates or money to help drive that vision into a reality.

The biggest change now is the $20 billion-plus in funding provided by HITECH to incentivize the adoption and meaningful use of health IT.

"I hate to sound pragmatic, but it's the money" that's making the biggest difference to most healthcare providers planning health IT adoption now, Bell said.

While some large healthcare delivery systems, such as Kaiser Permanente, have long been on the quest to improve efficiencies and quality of care through the use of health IT, "by and large most doctors practice in small offices and don't have the ability to move forward," she said.

But that's changing with the HITECH programs, Bell said. Those programs include billions of dollars in financial incentives for using EMRs, dozens of regional extension centers being set up to offer healthcare providers technical assistance for EMR deployments, and financial penalties starting in 2015 for healthcare providers who don't use health IT in meaningful ways. Added together, motivation to adopt health IT has never been greater.

"Physicians will need to make the business decision" to move ahead with these initiatives, either to cash in on rewards or face eventual penalties that weren't in the mix several years ago, prior to the passage of HITECH, she said.

Before accepting the new job at CCHIT, Bell was most recently a senior VP at Masspro, a health IT services firm and the federally-contracted quality improvement organization within Massachusetts.