Below is an exchange I had on a LinkedIn discussion group regarding certification in response to a comment made by someone speaking to its intended benefit.  As I have not sought his permission to quote him here, I will just provide a link to his comment.  My thoughts are the following.

My understanding is that some vendors are certified and some aren’t. As a provider let’s say I’ve issued an RFP and I select vendor A over vendor B for the sole purpose of the fact that vendor A’s product is certified.

Now, assume I am I large provider, and that this implementation will cost at or above $100 million. Clearly, I am not going to do an ‘out-of-the-box’ installation. Hence, whatever I go live with will differ in many respects with what was certified. That being the case, what I have may now look far different from what the certifiers had in mind.

Regardless of the intent of certification, it also creates very effective artificial barriers to entry for the smaller vendors.

You write that the “hope is…” If I am a hospital CMIO or COO I can’t base my decisions on something as arbitrary as that. Reform, Certification, Meaningful Use, Standards, and interoperability may as well be written on an Etch-A-Sketch as each of these are subject to change.

You also write that the purpose is to “assure” product A will inter-operate with product B using industry standards. As though standards are not final, how can assurance be offered? If for A to get to B the record has to pass through one or more as yet to be defined RHIOs haw can assurance be assured.

I think that although the intent of certification may have some merit, when the national roll-out of EHR scales up, we will see that the time and money invested in certification could have been better spent elsewhere.

Here’s the link, http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=130128&discussionID=7499646&commentID=6845299#commentID_6845299