At-risk, rural hospitals in Ohio, Minnesota and North Dakota will get $2.3 million-worth of technical help to switch from paper-based medical records to electronic ones.
The 1,655 “critical access hospitals” in 41 states will get a total of $20 million in new technical help from the Health Information Technology Economic and Clinical Health Act, better known as HITECH, according to a U.S. Health & Human Services (HHS) release.
“The benefits of health information technology can be especially important for patients and clinicians in small and rural health care facilities, yet these facilities face high hurdles as they look toward joining in the transition to electronic information,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in the release.
“The funding we are announcing today is a new category of support, aimed specifically at assisting critical access and rural hospitals with their particular needs and challenges,” Sebelius said. “This new funding is added to the substantial base we have already built to provide assistance to health care providers throughout the country as they transition to [electronic health records].”
The new money will come through 60 regional extension centers that help accelerate healthcare providers’ adopt electronic health record (EHR) systems and to meet meaningful use requirements to get Medicare and Medicaid incentives.
In Ohio, regional extension centers HealthBridge Inc. and Ohio Health Information Partnership will get $804,000 for small rural hospitals that receive cost-based reimbursement from Medicare to improve their financial performance and reduce hospital closures. Last week, HealthBridge was awarded $13.8 million in federal stimulus funding to help health providers better use information technology.
“This is good news for Ohio’s rural medical facilities and the Ohio patients they serve,” said U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Avon Lake Democrat, in a release. “Health information technology helps reduce medical errors, improves patient care and lowers health costs. By ensuring that health care facilities — as well as the doctors and nurses who work there — have the technology necessary to more quickly and safely consult with one another, we will continue to improve the delivery of medical care offered across our state.”
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Minnesota’s share of the money was bundled with North Dakota’s and will be administered by Regional Extension Assistance Center for Health Information Technology (REACH).
According to the Flex Monitoring Team, a rural health monitoring center that includes the University of Minnesota, there were 1,316 critical access hospitals nationwide on June 30. The hospitals have fewer than 25 acute beds or “swing” beds that could qualify as acute beds.
About $20 billion in federal stimulus dollars will flow to organizations that get hospitals and doctors’ offices ready to adopt electronic medical record technologies over the next four or five years.
