Almost a year after the Recovery Act legislation was passed, last week Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced that nearly $1 Billion will be used to invest in advancing the use of health information technology (HIT), and to train workers for health jobs of the future.
According to the press release, the money will be awarded in grants through 2014 that will make HIT available to over 100,000 health providers. A list of providers is given in the press release. It is hoped that, “this Recovery Act investment will help grow the emerging health IT industry which is expected to support tens of thousands of jobs ranging from nurses and pharmacy techs to IT technicians and trainers.”
The current breakdown of awards includes $386 million that will go to 40 states and qualified State Designated Entities (SDEs) to facilitate health information exchange (HIE) at the state level, while $375 million will go to an initial 32 non-profit organizations to support the development of regional extension centers (RECs) that will aid health professionals as they work to implement and use health information technology. It is proposed that “this assistance will facilitate health care providers' efforts to adopt and use electronic health records (EHRs) in a meaningful manner that has the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of health care for all Americans.”
Additional HIE and REC awards to be announced in the near future.
In addition, more than $225 million in DOL grant awards will be used to train 15,000 people in job skills needed to access careers in health care, IT and other high growth fields in job openings that likely will become available in the next two years in areas like nursing, pharmacy technology and information technology. The grants will fund 55 separate training programs in 30 states to help train people for secure, well-paid health jobs and meet the growing employment demand for health workers.
This money will also allow health IT extension centers to hire over 3,000 technology workers nationwide in the months ahead.
While the debate regarding HIT and EHRs is still unsettled, this investment should be sure to focus on studying the impacts and outcomes of using private information on computers. The likelihood of making mistakes, disclosing protected information, and security breaches will be very high during the initial phases of installing new technologies. There will also be two other important considerations: compatibility with current systems that doctors, hospitals and health care providers use, and the amount of time it will take doctors and staff to enter data. All of these issues must be carefully watched and improvements should be constantly made.
It is also important to note that industry representatives such as General Electric (GE) are leading the field in providing HIT and EHRs, and other technologies to help advance treatments for doctors and patients. Before such support is scrutinized for being ‘conflicted,’ their contribution to developing this technology should be praised because if it sets out to do what supporters believe, people’s lives will be saved, and so will some money.
Additional information about the state HIE and RECs may be found here.
Information about other health IT programs funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 can be found here: : http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/state-health-information-exchange
Information about Healthcare/High Growth Grants, and other DOL training programs is available at http://www.doleta.gov/.
For more information about the Recovery Act, please visit: www.hhs.gov/recovery , www.dol.gov/recovery and www.recovery.gov