HHS awards millions in grants to advance health IT initiatives
Department expects to hire 3,000 technology workers at extension centers to promote adoption of electronic records.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says only 20 percent of doctors and 10 percent of hospitals have even basic electronic health records.
The Health and Human Services Department will award more than $750 million in grants to support state and local efforts to drive adoption of electronic health records systems by practitioners and hospitals, HHS officials announced Friday.
Additional grants awarded by the Labor Department will fund training programs to increase the health IT workforce.
"When electronic health records are designed and used correctly, there's a huge benefit to patients and their doctors," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during a conference call with reporters. "Despite this, only 20 percent of doctors and 10 percent of hospitals have even basic electronic health records. We have some distance to cover."
The primary obstacles to adoption of electronic records include lack of information about the systems available and compatibility issues between systems that make the exchange of record information difficult.
The HHS grants announced Friday include $375 million to support the development of 32 nonprofit regional extension centers, which will help educate health care providers about which records systems best meet their needs and how to use them effectively. HHS' long-term goal is to build a national network supporting 100,000 primary care providers, focusing on those with the fewest resources to adopt technologies on their own, Sebelius said.
"It's not just that [these grants] give financial incentives to get a computer and plug it in," she said. "Practitioners need to figure out operationally how to make this work, and that will require hands-on support. The [grants will] establish an on-the-ground program for that kind of personal, technical assistance."
HHS expects to hire 3,000 technology workers to staff the health IT extension centers in the months ahead. Additional funds are expected to be funneled into the effort in March.
An additional $385 million in grants will go to 40 states to advance the "development of platforms and frameworks to allow information to remain secure and private [when] exchanged across providers and hospitals," Sebelius said. "As you look at health IT, patient privacy is the top priority."
Last month, HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology released an interim rule that sets initial standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for e-health records technology, including security assurance.
In conjunction with Friday's announcement by HHS, the Labor Department announced it would issue more than $225 million in grants to train 15,000 people in the skills needed for high-growth fields of health care, including information technology. The grants will fund 55 training programs in 30 states, offered at community colleges and other local academic institutions.
Grant recipients "are partnering with local businesses to make sure workers have jobs waiting for them when they complete training," said Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. The department already has identified about 10,000 job openings that likely will become available in the next two years in areas such as nursing, pharmacy technology and information technology. Employment services will be available via Labor's local One-Stop Career Centers.
The HHS and Labor grants are part of a $100 billion investment in science, innovation and technology under the Recovery Act.
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