More Funding for IT Extension Centers
The Office of the National Coordinator
for Health IT will provide an additional
$12 million in technical support assistance to help critical access hospitals
and rural hospitals adopt health IT.
The new funding will be administered
through regional extension centers
(RECs), which contract with ONC to
provide hands-on assistance to providers in implementing health IT. Forty-eight RECs serving critical access and
rural hospitals will receive the additional funding.
The $12 million in targeted new funding followed a January announcement
that ONC would revise the REC grants
to offer significantly more financial
support in the second half of the four-year program.
Under the revised funding terms,
ONC will pay 90 percent of the grants
for all four years. Under the original arrangements, ONC was to pay 90 percent in years 1 and 2 and 10 percent in
years 3 and 4.
The original grants were written with
the intent that RECs would be self-
sustaining after two years and capable
of surviving without major funding. The
change appears to acknowledge that
this will not be realistic for the program
as a whole.
ACTIVATION MANAGEMENT SERVICES
www.divergent.com
DIVURGENT released ACTIVATE!, an
activation management service to help
healthcare provider organizations man-
age and coordinate entire activation
projects from pre-activation planning to
activation training, management, and
support staffing to post-activation met-
rics and reporting efforts.
EHR FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM HOSPITALS
www.ecaresoft.com
eCareSoft launched eCS Inpatient EHR
V1.2, an EHR solution for small and me-
dium hospitals. The eCS Inpatient EHR
offers hospitals an EHR system with
clinical and financial management sys-
tems in a single Web-based software
solution. The solution is offered as an
SaaS model.
EHNAC Announces 2011 Accreditation Programs
The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission announced
its 2011 criteria for accreditation programs, which includes a program to
test and accredit health information
exchange organizations.
The nonprofit standards development organization and accrediting
body will continue to offer its Health Information Exchange Accreditation Program (HIEAP), first launched in October
2010. The program tests HIE in privacy
and confidentiality, security, technical
performance, business practices, and
organizational technical resources.
At the end of January, one HIE orga-
nization had achieved HIEAP accredi-
tation, one HIE was in the accreditation
process, and one organization had ap-
plied, according to Lee Barrett, execu-
tive director of EHNAC.
Nine other accreditation programs
for 2011 were announced in January:
x e-Prescribing
x Financial Services for Electronic
Health Networks
x Financial Services for Lockbox
Services
x Healthcare Network Plus Select
SAS 70 Criteria
x Healthcare Network for Electronic
Health Networks
x Healthcare Network for Medical
Billers
x Healthcare Network for TPAs
x Management Service Organization
x Outsourced Services ¢
BUSINESS METRICS SOLUTION
www.remitdata.com
A new solution from RemitDATA called
TITAN offers healthcare providers ac-
cess to key business metrics previously
available only to payers, Medicare, and
regulators. The data may be used to
compare real-time reimbursements
against local, regional, and state peers
and anticipate audits by setting risk
alerts and outlier recognition.
HANDHELD READERS
www.datalogic.com
Datalogic Scanning released its Gry-
phon 4000-HC series of handheld
readers for general purpose applica-
tions. The readers feature top reading
and decoding speed and support 1D or
2D label decoding. Cordless products
are available with Datalogic’s STAR
Cordless System or Bluetooth wireless
technology.
HIPAA SECURIT Y COMPLIANCE ASSESSMEN T
www.ahimastore.org
AHIMA’s new book Preparing for a
HIPAA Security Compliance Assess-
ment offers information to help orga-
nizations create and maintain the se-
curity audit program required under
HIPAA. ¢
