Eighty-five percent of hospitals in the contracting phase of an IT acquisition have signed with a Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT)-certified vendor since November 2007, when CCHIT released its first acute care- or inpatient-certified products, according to data from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics Database.

"By selecting certified EMR products, these health systems know that these applications will meet important guidelines for functionality, interoperability and security," said Carla Smith, CNM, executive vice president for HIMSS. "With money for health IT included in the economic stimulus package, we look forward to seeing continued implementations of these certified systems."

Since 2004, CCHIT's certification program has helped mitigate claims on the EMR products available in the marketplace making it easier to judge product suitability, quality, interoperability, data portability and security. With acute-care EMR certification introduced just over a year ago, many hospital systems had already implemented their technology systems.

With the introduction of CCHIT certification for inpatient or acute-care EMR products, support for the certification process remains strong among healthcare IT purchasers at healthcare organizations.

HIMSS Analytics collects and analyzes this healthcare data from more than 5,000 U.S. hospitals and 100 applications relating to IT processes and environments, products, information systems department composition, costs and management metrics, healthcare trends and purchasing decisions.