Part of the HITECH Act portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA; Federal Stimulus) seeks to establish a new program of technical assistance and education to health care providers - with the goal of facilitating "meaningful use" of electronic health records. This program is called the Health Information Technology Extension Program, and it is partially modeled on the concept of the decades-old USDA agricultural extension service and the more recent (though also decades old) US Dept of Commerce manufacturing extension program. The thought is to take nationally-recognized best practices and education and disseminate it to the "front lines" of implementation - in this case to health care providers - while also providing technical assistance.
Technical assistance can include evaluation and selection of an electronic health record system for those that don't have one, as well as helping those that already have an EHR achieve what the Stimulus Package calls "meaningful use" - which will include implementation and use of a "certified" EHR system, successful use of e-prescribing, participation in health information exchange, and reporting of clinical qualify data to Medicare and/or Medicaid. The HITECH Act also spells out prioritized groups of providers to receive this assistance, such as public/non-profit hospitals, Federally Qualified Health Centers, providers serving rural or underserved areas, and small primary care practices. The Extension Program as currently suggested would have both "in the field," multi-disciplinary consultants, as well as subject matter experts in areas such as privacy and security, legal, EHR evaluation, organizational development, economics/business and financing.
So, the Feds have released a draft description of what this program might look like, which we've posted to our website, and you can access here: Federal Register notice on HIT Extension Program
Because of our organization's mission, and the requirement that any Regional Extension Center be affiliated with a non-profit organization, we have recommended to our Board that AzHeC take the lead on creating the Arizona Regional Extension Center. What do you think that this Regional Extension Center should look like? What would make this successful in Arizona? We want to hear from you for two reasons: 1) to provide feedback by Thursday, June 11th, to the Feds on their draft description; and 2) to design a program that will be successful in Arizona.
Please either post a comment below, or email us at info@azhec.org (with "HIT Extension Center feedback" in the subject line). Only comments received by Wednesday, June 10th at 12noon will be incorporated into the comment letter to the Feds. Thanks!!