CalOptima Foundation Tapped To Help Advance Health Care IT Efforts
On Tuesday, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology announced the CalOptima Foundation as one of the final two regional extension centers, The Hill's "Healthwatch" reports.
RECs were established under the 2009 economic stimulus package to help physicians and hospitals adopt electronic health records.
CalOptima received $4.7 million to cover Orange County, and the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative received $5.1 million to cover the state of New Hampshire (Lillis, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 9/28).
Background
The two new RECs join a national system of 62 organizations. The RECs aim to assist in health IT efforts among:
- Rural hospitals;
- Small practices; and
- Public health clinics (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 9/28).
Blumenthal Weighs In
National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal said that the selection of the final two RECs means that the extension centers are now available "in every region of our country to help health providers make the switch from paper-based medical practice to electronic health records" (Lubell, Modern Healthcare, 9/28).
A complete list of REC grant recipients is available on the HHS website.
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