ehr onc final certification - Department of Health Care Services

list information from external sources. The commenter suggested we clarify that
“retrieve” meant retrieval of only information internally available to Certified EHR
Technology. Other commenters, similar to their comments on the problem list
certification criterion, stated that there needed to be more clarity with respect to how the
reference to “longitudinal care” applied to a Complete EHR or EHR Module used by an
eligible hospital.
Response. We clarify that for this certification criterion, and all other certification
criteria, the term “retrieve” means the retrieval of information directly stored and
managed by Certified EHR Technology and that it does not mean the retrieval of
information from external sources, unless explicitly stated otherwise. We also take this
opportunity, in the context of our response regarding “longitudinal care” above, to clarify
that “medication history” is intended to include a record of prior modifications to a
patient’s medications.
Comment. A commenter stated that there needs to be more clarity with respect to
whether an EHR Module must maintain a list of all active medications or if a specialty
system, such as a cardiology system, could maintain a list of medications specific to its
specialty use and provide the list to the enterprise EHR.
Response. If an EHR Module developer seeks to have its “medication list EHR
Module” certified, the EHR Module must provide the capabilities specified by the
certification criterion. We do not intend to limit how the EHR Module could
appropriately provide these capabilities (i.e., whether the EHR Module must itself enable
the user to electronically record, modify, and retrieve a patient’s active medication list for
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