Healthcare IT Update

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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EHR Interoperability: 6 Lessons Learned from One Early Adopter

How EHR software errors can lead to medication errors. In order for your health care organization to receive stimulus package funds, your HIT systems have to be “interoperable,” which means they must be able to support the electronic exchange of patient health information among caregivers and other authorized parties through electronic health record (EHR) systems. This requirement has created myriad technical and security hurdles that the feds have just begun to address. Before your organization tackles this requirement and signs up for the stimulus money, take a look at how one frontrunner — the Veterans Health Administration —  has instituted its own EHR system, in order to learn some valuable lessons and save time and money. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office, “Quality Initiatives Undertaken by the  Veterans Health Administration” (August 2009), assesses the VHA’s efforts to implement HIT dealing…

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