Montana Hospital Sues Developer Over Electronic Health-Record Certification

A small Montana hospital may be among the first of many providers to go to court to resolve their frustrations with electronic health record systems developers that are either lagging or failing to update their software to the new, more stringent testing and certification requirements of the federal EHR incentive payment program.

Mountainview Medical Center in White Sulphur Springs is suing NextGen Healthcare Information Systems in federal court for failing to provide a certified EHR system in a timely manner.

“That's the most important thing in this whole deal, to be federally certified,” said Aaron Rogers, CEO of the 25-bed Mountainview. “This is a huge, huge deal for every hospital, and we're certainly in that group. Ultimately, the reason there is a lawsuit is because certification was not attained, plain and simple. It didn't meet the criteria that we have to have federally.”

The critical-access hospital argues in the lawsuit that it was promised “a certified electronic health record system as defined by federal law” when it licensed software from NextGen in 2012.