Healthcare IT Update

Already Got Great HIT At Your Health Care Organization?

Want $235 Million Dollars? Sometimes providers that already have established HIT systems complain that all the ARRA money is headed towards just getting started with HIT and EMR. But HHS has announced a new grants program aimed at helping “Beacon Communities” build on HIT excellence and take ‘leadership’ roles in health care communities. “In a press teleconference [last] Tuesday, U.S. health secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the new Beacon Community Program grants will help communities of healthcare providers “get a handle” on improving care through the meaningful use of IT,” reports Information Week. These grants will total $235 million. “The grants will not be awarded to healthcare providers to start up health IT initiatives, but rather to communities that are already national leaders in their use of IT to advance healthcare quality, safety, efficiency, and population health…” More from Information Week …

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CMS Begins to Distribute Millions Earmarked for EHRs

Get your electronic health record in place so you can benefit from government bonuses. Late this summer, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the government would appropriate over a billion dollars in grants to help healthcare providers implement electronic health records (EHRs), and it didn’t take long for the first awards to be distributed. On Sept. 29, HHS announced that it had awarded $27.8 million to health center-controlled networks and large health centers to implement EHRs and other health information technology initiatives. The goal of the funding is to improve productivity, accuracy, and quality via the use of EHRs. “These funds to expand and upgrade electronic health records systems will make a huge difference for health centers struggling to provide health care to the growing number of people in need,” said Mary Wakefield, PhD, RN, administrator of HHS’s Health Resources and Service Administration, in a Sept. 29 statement.

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HIT Grants: How To Get Your Share of ARRA’s $48 Billion

Put these grant opportunities on your radar–and stay tuned. Your health system may qualify for millions in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding to support your HIT initiatives — that’s in addition to the Medicare and Medicaid EHR adoption incentives. Much of the ARRA funding will become grants that health centers can apply for, said Michael Paddock, CEO of Grants Office in Rochester, N.Y., at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference in Chicago. Responding to these funding opportunities will be similar to what you’ve done for previous grants; the difference will be in the dollar amount, which could reach to hundreds of millions, Paddock said. Still, the ARRA funding will not stretch far enough to fund EHR across all healthcare agencies. Be on the lookout for loan programs to fill in the gaps, he added. AUDIO TRAINING EVENT: $44,000 for…

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