The State of Oregon's O-health Information Technology Extension Center (O-HITEC), a division of non-profit collaborative OCHIN, set itself a goal three years ago: to encourage a significant number of the state's primary care physicians into compliance with a federal grant for electronic health records. Recently, the group announced that it had not only achieved, but surpassed the goal of its 2009 federal grant award by signing on more than 2,700 Oregon-based primary care providers to receive help in choosing, implementing and effectively using electronic health records technology as a way of improving patient care and reducing healthcare costs. With these results, O-HITEC in the top 10 out of 62 regional extension centers in the nation.
Electronic health records involve the digitizing and computer storage, presentation and sharing of digital patient information with the purpose of allowing multiple healthcare providers, insurance companies and healthcare consultants to be able to share patient information easily for the purpose of better diagnosis and patient care.
O-HITEC is well on its way toward EHR penetration. It has reported that 61 percent of the 2,700 healthcare providers are already electronic patient records in what can be considered a “sophisticated manner,” according to a press release.
10 percent of those 61 percent have achieved the first stage of a three-stage federal process to meaningfully use EHR and qualify for federal incentives of up to $64,000 per Medicaid-eligible provider. Moving forward with the program, O-HITEC expects that many more providers will qualify in first quarter of 2012. Although not a part of the grant, medical specialists in Oregon are also benefiting from membership in O-HITEC by receiving the same EHR adoption and usage services.
Ultimately, O-HITEC plans to reach about 95 percent of all Oregon primary care providers that qualify under the grant within the next two years.
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Dave Rodgriguez is Editor-in-Chief of HealthTechZone. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves
