Health IT Roundup: Stimulus funding pushes effort to wire doctors' offices

The Orlando Sentinel: Although regional plans to wire doctors' offices have circulated for some time, "this promises to be the year doctors go digital, allowing them to share patients' medical histories or pull up diagnostic test results with the click of a mouse. Health care experts predict it will be one of the biggest health care developments of 2010." Stimulus grants and incentives to get doctors and hospitals to go digital may push the earlier plans and pilot projects to fruition (Quintero, 1/8).

Wichita Business Journal: Hospitals, however, are so far not happy with the way the stimulus funding is being implemented, saying officials are moving too quickly. "At issue is a proposed regulation that spells out what hospitals and health providers must do in order to receive incentive payments for 'meaningful use' of electronic health records" (Hoover, 1/8).

Billings (Mont.) Gazette/(Helena) Independent Record: Money for health IT is reaching providers through other avenues, as well. "The timing of the recently signed $1.1 trillion federal appropriations bill couldn't be better for the Cooperative Health Center, which stands to receive $100,000 to help interface its growing log of electronic medical records with St. Peter's Hospital" in Helena (Kidston, 1/10).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.