The Departments of Health and Human Service and Labor announced last Friday nearly $1 billion in grants under the and-reinvestment-act-arra" target="_blank" class="directory-item-link">American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for healthcare IT training, regional extension centers (RECs) and tory-item-link">health information exchange.
If the goal of the HITECH Act under ARRA is to drive healthcare IT adoption, funding those three areas is absolutely the right move. Achieving href="/directory/meaningful-use" target="_blank" class="directory-item-link">meaningful use is difficult enough, but before you can even think about meeting those measures, you have to have the funding and IT resources upfront. You need a skilled workforce to implement and manage the systems. You need regional centers to provide assistance and resources. And you need interoperable healthcare IT systems to fully derive value from EHRs. But you have to fund to build up those efforts.
Of the nearly $1 billion, $375 million will go to a first round of 32 non-profit organizations to support RECs, which will help approximately 100,000 primary care providers and hospitals implement and use healthcare IT.
Purdue University was awarded $12 million for a REC. Purdue will focus on small practices throughout Indiana and those treating underserved populations in particular. Efforts like this will shrink the digital divide in the healthcare industry.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said HHS will announce additional HIE and REC awards in the future. Once the first round of awardees are up and running, HHS can determine where the geographic, service and other gaps exist and award the next round accordingly.
