Sharp Community Medical Group (SCMG), comprising 200 primary care physicians and 500 specialists in private practices in the San Diego area, and Graybill Medical Group, based in Escondido and one of the largest primary care practices in California, are going to develop a patient management and electronic health record systems. They are also developing strategies that will make implementations more efficient and therefore achieve go-live much sooner than traditional software implementations.

I love the idea of medical groups collaborating to build IT systems that are physician-focused. A lot of health IT vendors have clinicians on staff to oversee product development, but you still hear complaints from clinicians that the EHRs they have to work with are not user-friendly, intuitive or built for their workflow.

SCMG has successfully built a practice management and EHR system using a "unique" architecture that automates and integrates administrative and clinical processes and presents a comprehensive view of each of its patients for its physician members and affiliates.

The word "unique" caught my eye. I started thinking about certification and how physician practices would be able to participate in health information exchange with other medical groups and hospitals with this type of a product. I'm sure there are other home-grown solutions out there (does any one want to pipe up about their system and their benefits?). How would certification bodies deal with home-grown solutions? Should they evaluate them on a case-by-base basis to determine the achievement of meaningful-use criteria? Is SCMG's EHR solution based on any existing standards and will that matter if physician groups can connect to health information exchanges just fine?

If the collaboration produces another success, perhaps SCMG will market its solutions to other physician practices. If it does and the products gain traction, certification groups would have to take notice. But that scenario would take time, and with ARRA milestones not that far away, certification groups should consider how to approach these unique solutions. If anyone has answers to any of the questions I posed above, please share with the community.