Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) Secretary Mike Leavitt is traveling the nation to
encourage community leaders to join together and apply for a new
Medicare demonstration project that provides incentive payments
for physicians’ use of electronic health records (EHR) to
improve patient care. The project will be open to small and
medium sized primary care physician practices, is expected to
reduce medical errors and improve the quality of care for an
estimated 3.6 million Americans.
The Missouri Health Information
Management Association (MHIMA) has been asked to take on the
primary conveners’ role for the St. Louis area application. The
other conveners joining MHIMA are Saint Louis University’s Doisy
College of Health Sciences – Department of Health Informatics &
Information Management, and HIMSS RHIO Liaison – Tom Flanigan.
It is very exciting for MHIMA to take on this role. We look
forward to working with the stakeholders in St. Louis.
CMS will choose 12 communities
for the demonstration project in June 2008. They will focus on
locations where the demonstration may enhance existing or
planned private sector projects that support adoption and use of
health information technology and quality reporting
initiatives. Once the communities have been selected, CMS will
begin working with the communities to recruit physician
practices for participation in the demonstration.
The demonstration project is a
major step toward the President’s goal of most Americans having
access to a secure, interoperable electronic health record by
2014.
For more information about the
EHR demonstration project,
click here.
The kick-off for the St. Louis
community is scheduled for Thursday, March 13, 2008. The MHIMA
Board of Directors will send updates to the membership as the
project proceeds. So, stay tuned.
