ehr onc final certification - Department of Health Care Services

what would qualify as a "response." One commenter stated that whether we intended for
the examples (pop-up or sound) to be inclusive of the types of alerts we expected
Certified EHR Technology would include and whether this was deemed more valuable
than a more passive notification. The commenter suggested that the word “alert” be
replaced with “notification” while another suggested the word “advisory.” Some
commenters requested clarification regarding “alerts responded to by a user” and whether
there was an expectation that alerts communicate structured reasons. These commenters
also asked whether users would enter a reason for any overrides or, in the case of
notifications, the user would simply acknowledge the alert by clicking “OK.” The
commenters also questioned whether ignored alerts should be tracked? Many of these
commenters recommended removing §170.304(e)(3). Alternatively, one commenter
recommended that we not only consider the number of alerts “responded to” but also the
action prompted and whether or not that action was taken.
Response. We thank commenters for the thorough feedback on this certification
criterion. We have already addressed in our responses above the concerns raised by
commenters and will not repeat them here. With respect to the third part of this
certification criterion, we have considered public comment and have decided to remove
the requirement from the certification criterion. We also removed this requirement to be
more consistent with CMS’s expectations for meaningful use, which do not include
requiring the tracking of alerts at this time.
Comments. A few commenters asked for clarification on what we meant by
"evidence grade" and what standard for evidence grading will be applied in order to
determine compliance with this objective. Other commenters noted that “evidence
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