HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last Friday that nearly $20 million will be awarded to 1,655 critical-access and rural hospitals in 41 states and the District of Columbia-based nationwide Indian Country.
The money will provide much-needed technical assistance for these financially vulnerable hospitals as the industry moves from a paper-based patient record environment to an electronic one.
The funding comes through the Regional Extension Center program, but Sebelius pointed out that this is new funding. I don't know if $20 million was originally earmarked for critical-access and rural hospitals or a portion of the more than $663 million given to the REC program to date was set aside to fill any gaps or barriers to EHR adoption. Whichever is the case, providing adequate financing to meet all healthcare providers' needs marks another thoughtful, strategic move on HHS' part.
Now that the most of the money under the HITECH Act has been delivered or announced, the next steps are to ensure that the various programs - RECs, statewide health information exchanges, workforce training and incentives for the meaningful use of EHRs - are achieving their goals and intervention is swift to correct any barriers that slow the ultimate goal of a healthcare system fully optimizing health IT to deliver better clinical outcomes, improved patient safety and population management, and cost-efficiencies.
On the to-do list: There is a lot of misinformation going around in the field, and HHS and the local RECs have the huge task of proactively quash the rumors and providing the correct information, and reprimand those - including opportunistic EHR vendors - who may be spreading those rumors.
There should also be honest feedback about the helpfulness of the local RECs. I'd be curious to know how your local REC is doing. Are they providing services that are helping you with your implementation? Are they giving you timely, relevant information? Let us know how the program is going.
