ehr onc final certification - Department of Health Care Services

could be a health care professional or office staff, someone who might interact directly
with Certified EHR Technology or that it could also be software program or service.
D. Final Rule Amendments to Adopted Standards, Implementation Specifications, and
Certification Criteria §§170.202, 170.205, 170.207, 170.210, 170.302, 170.304, 170.306
1. Flexibility and Innovation
Comments. Many commenters requested that we provide more flexibility in the
final rule to accommodate new developments in HIT. These commenters agreed with our
approach to identify minimum standards for certain code sets and they recommended a
similar approach for other standards. Some commenters suggested alternative
approaches to adopting standards, such as adopting standards at a higher level of
abstraction (e.g., HL7 2.x, where “x” could be any version within the version 2 family)
and accompanying the adopted standards with detailed implementation specifications or
guidance outside of the rulemaking process.
Response. We appreciate commenters’ support for the “minimum standard”
approach that we established in the Interim Final Rule. We believe that code sets are an
appropriate type of standard to set as a “minimum.” In the Temporary Certification
Program final rule, we discuss the approaches available to the Secretary to identify and
accept newer versions of adopted minimum code set standards. Below, we discuss how
we have added flexibility into this final rule and how we can add flexibility in future
rulemakings.
In many cases, however, our flexibility may be limited due to legal requirements
to adopt substantive requirements through following the procedures of the Administrative
Procedure Act (APA). Depending upon the circumstances and subject matter, we may
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