GE Healthcare announces two new EMR solutions certified for meaningful use at HIMSS meeting

At the annual meeting of the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) in Orlando this week, GE Healthcare announced two new Electronic Medical Record (EMR) solutions that have been certified for meaningful use. Centricity Practice Solution 10 and Centricity Patient Online 12 are enhancements to existing EMR solutions from GE Healthcare that will help customers achieve Meaningful Use and go beyond, meeting the needs of clinicians and patients with elegant design, intuitive workflows and easy-to-use features.

"2011 will be a critical year for adopting meaningful use and GE Healthcare continues to lead the way by delivering solutions that can help healthcare providers easily and quickly achieve their goals," said Jim Corrigan, Vice President and General Manager of GE Healthcare IT. "Our broad solution portfolio offers healthcare providers the tools they need to lower costs and gain better control of the information in their practices - whether they are working a small primary care practice or a large academic hospital or something in between."

Centricity Practice Solution 10

Centricity Practice Solution 10 is the evolution of GE Healthcare's fully integrated EMR and practice management system for physician practices. Centricity Practice Solution 10 now has embedded reports that providers can use to track their progress toward becoming "meaningful users." This new version has already attained 2011/2012 Meaningful Use Stage I certification as a complete EHR from CCHIT®. Leveraging the quality improvement and reporting capabilities that have long been part of GE Healthcare's Medical Quality Improvement Consortium (MQIC), Centricity Practice Solution 10 customers will continue to be at the forefront of quality benchmarking through access to powerful and convenient reporting for Meaningful Use, PQRI, NCQA and other incentive-driven reporting initiatives. Centricity Practice Solution customers will now able to track the clinical quality measures for Meaningful Use, and also have improved data to drive quality care for their patients.

Centricity Practice Solution 10 features a welcoming design and easy navigation based on extensive research with EMR users. Robust without being overwhelming, each screen provides just the right amount of information, clearly demarcated so busy doctors can focus on just the patient data that's needed at each moment - which can improve real, ongoing adoption of digital medical records. The solution is currently being implemented by several early-adopter customers. GE Healthcare expects the product to be generally-available in the second calendar quarter of 2011.

Centricity Patient Online 12

GE Healthcare is demonstrating Centricity Patient Online 12, a new release of the company's established Patient Portal technology, at HIMSS11. Centricity Patient Online creates a single channel of communications that extends the provider workflow to the patient's home to help reduce costs, enhance quality, and increase access to care. Centricity Patient Online 12 also helps providers meet Meaningful Use Stage 1 required and menu-pick rulings with many new capabilities. These include the ability to give patients an electronic copy of their health information upon request, to provide timely electronic access to the patient's health information (including lab results, problem list, medication lists and medication allergies) within four business days of the information being available to the provider, to provide clinical summaries for patients for each office visit and to offer patient-specific educational resources. Centricity Patient Online 12 is generally available today.

Additional GE Healthcare Solutions Certified for Meaningful Use

GE Healthcare also announced that two more of its solutions recently achieved Meaningful Use certification. Centricity Enterprise 6.9 is 2011/2012 compliant and was certified as a complete EHR on February 17, 2011 by The Drummond Group. Centricity Enterprise 6.6.3.2 had been previously announced as a certified Complete Eligible Hospital EHR. Centricity EMR 9.5, which is expected to be available in early Q2, is also 2011/2012 compliant and was certified as a Complete EHR on October 28, 2010 by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT ®). GE Healthcare also previously announced that Centricity Advance, its web-based EMR for smaller physician practices, is 2011/2012 Meaningful Use certified as a complete EHR.

CCHIT and The Drummond Group made these designations in their capacity as Office of the National Coordinator - Authorized Temporary Certification Bodies (ONC-ATCBs) in accordance with the applicable eligible provider certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Currently-available versions of the company's specialty solutions, Centricity Perinatal 6.9 and Centricity Perioperative Anesthesia 7.6, have also been submitted to certifying bodies and are expected to achieve modular certification in the first half of 2011. Modular certification indicates that the vendor has passed the mandatory privacy and security tests established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and supports some of the Meaningful Use objectives. To certify as a modular software vendor, GE Healthcare must meet the same mandatory privacy and security tests as full EHR vendors. Upon successful completion of the modular certification, GE Healthcare will announce the detailed components for which it is certified.