CalRHIO Awards Grants to Local Health Data Networks
The California Regional Health Information Organization on Monday said it is providing four state safety net health data exchanges with up to $340,000 to strengthen or expand their current networks, the San Francisco Business Times reports.
The funding was made available through a grant from Blue Shield of California Foundation, and the four recipients of the funds are the:
- Alliance Medical Center in Healdsburg;
- Community Health Partnership in Santa Clara;
- San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium; and
- Tehachapi Valley Health Care District (Rauber, San Francisco Business Times, 8/20).
The projects in Healdsburg, Santa Clara and the Tehachapi Valley address electronic access to clinical data from local hospitals. The San Francisco and Santa Clara projects also deal with electronic specialty referrals for the safety net population, and the Healdsburg project focuses on electronic access to lab results and orders (Pizzi, Healthcare IT News, 8/20).
Molly Coye, one of CalRHIO's founding board members and president and CEO of the Health Technology Center, said CalRHIO hopes to have the system's backbone in place in about 18 months and to complete the exchange in two to three years.
An advisory group that included representatives from public and rural hospitals and community clinics selected grant recipients from 12 submissions through a request for proposal process, the Business Times reports (San Francisco Business Times, 8/20). This is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.