The Health and Human Services Department is preparing to award a series of task orders totaling about $50 million to establish a national Health Information Technology Research Center (HITRC) to support promotion of electronic health records, a senior official said.
The HITRC will assist about 60 health IT regional extension centers, which aim to help 100,000 priority providers to adopt and meaningfully use digital record systems, said Joshua Seidman, acting director of the meaningful use division in the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. He spoke at a conference today sponsored by the eHealth Initiative, a nonprofit organization devoted to improving health care quality and efficiency through health IT. HHS expects to designate about half the extensions centers within weeks, Seidman said. The extension centers are funded with $598 million in funding under the economic stimulus law. Overall, the stimulus law provided $20 billion for health IT, including $17 billion for incentive payments to doctors and hospitals that buy and meaningfully use electronic record systems.
