The Office of the National Coordinator expects to announce "very soon" the first set of a total of 70 grant awards designed to establish a system of regional educational and training facilities to educate physicians on productive uses of health IT, said a federal official who will help oversee the program.
Joshua Seidman, ONC's acting director of meaningful use in the Office of Provider Adoption Support, called the Regional Extension Centers pivotal tools for healthcare providers to become educated in the particulars of electronic health record adoption and meaningful use.
"We believe there is tremendous potential in health IT but only if it is meaningfully used," he said today at a conference sponsored by the eHealth Initiative.
ONC hopes to enlist 100,000 healthcare providers to participate in the extension center program. Each center would aim to support 1,000 to 2,000 providers, Seidman said at the Jan. 26 conference.
The centers, inspired by the Agriculture Department's regional extension program, are intended to provide small physician practices, rural health centers and critical care hospitals the resources and technical tools they need to become sophisticated users of health IT.
ONC plans a full set of resources and services, including unbiased guidance on vendor selection and group purchasing, assistance to providers with project management and help to re-design work flows of their practices in an electronic environment.
A separate Health IT Research Center would keep the extension centers relevant by offering them best practices and a "continuous learning community" to help determine ways to approach providers in their particular region.
Among its tools, the research center will have a portal, available to those who can only interact with the facility electronically. The research center will be established through multiple contracts, with the first ones expected before the end of March, Seidman said.
