ONC accelerates extension center grant awards

The Office of the National Coordinator plans to accelerate its timetable for rolling out a set of 70 regional health IT “extension centers,” designed to provide training services to help hospitals and medical offices adopt electronic health record systems under the federal health IT incentive plan.

To do so, ONC said it would it announce the extension center grant winners in two rounds instead of the three originally planned, with a first round of about 30 grants to be made on Jan. 21, 2010. The remaining 40 or so grants would be announced in a second and final round in March.

The ONC had originally planned to make a first set of 20 awards on Dec. 11 of this year, followed by a second and third round of awards by September 2010. 

National health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal said ONC had decided to compress the timetable to take advantage of  the number of “high quality applications,” it had received, as well as to ensure healthcare providers had as much time as possible to get the training they needed to quality for incentives under the health IT stimulus plan. 

Blumenthal announced the changes at a conference Dec. 4 sponsored by the National Committee on Quality Assurance.

“We want to get these centers launched as quickly as possible so they can be ready to help for meaningful use in 2011,” he said.    

The aim of the centers is to “get boots on the ground where doctors and hospitals and other health professionals live, helping them elbow to elbow to become meaningful users of electronic health records,” Blumenthal said.

The priorities for the first set of centers are to help primary care physicians and small hospitals in underserved areas, he said.

Another category of grant awards is expected even sooner. States are seeking grants to develop health information exchanges to help providers share health data for coordination of patient care and quality reporting. ONC anticipates awarding the state grants Dec. 15, according to its Web site.

States hold the best approach for health information exchange, Blumenthal said. “I know from my years as a provider that healthcare is a local industry and that exchange of privileged health information will very well happen first at the local level before it becomes more widespread,” he said.

States are also in a position to bring together investments, leadership and “the convening capability that is so important to creating trust and local exchange”

More information about the state health information exchange and regional extension center grant programs is online.