ONC Produces Nov 16, 2010 article for Annals of Internal Medicine
The regional extension center program: helping physicians meaningfully use health information technology.
The value of the Regional Extension Center (REC) Program in supporting physicians moving into meaningful use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is summarized in this five-page article, plus related charts, published November 16, 2010 in American College of Physicians’ Annals of Internal Medicine. Tables show the three stages of implementing ‘meaningful use’ of EHRs and the specific types of help that will be offered to physicians for each of six major challenges: EHR selection, price negotiation for EHRs, training and implementation, achieving and reporting meaningful use, achieving a rate of return on IT investment, and addressing privacy and security concerns.
The article describes two models that have demonstrated how support programs work for implementing EHRs–Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative and Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) of New York City. In 18 months the Massachussetts helped about 600 physicians implement EHRs, and as of June 2010, PCIP signed up more than 2,000 providers “to implement or improve their EHR systems.” While these two programs purchased EHRs for their clinicians, purchases of EHRs in the REC program will be done by the individual providers. The REC will select “supported” EHR vendors and negotitate volume discounts and implementation and service agreements.
62 Regional Extension Centers were selected with the majority statewide, several multi-state, and about a third covering part of a state. After the first two years, the RECs will need to develop revenues to make them self-sustaining.
HITRC, the national Health Information Technology Research Center, has been setup to leverage learnings across the entire REC system by sharing best practices.
Lead authors are Emily Maxson, BS, Research Fellow, and Sachin Jain, MD, MBA, Special Assistant to the National Coordinator. Co-authors include Mat Kendall, MPH, Director, Provider Adoption Support; Farzad Mostashari, MD, MPH, Deputy National Coordinator for Programs and Policy; and David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. All authors are associated with the ONC.
See a directory of Regional Extension Centers organized by state on e-Healthcare Marketing.
