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The Health IT Regional Extension Center Program: Evolution and Lessons for Health Care Transformation
Author(s) -
Lynch Kimberly,
Kendall Mat,
Shanks Katherine,
Haque Ahmed,
Jones Emily,
Wanis Maggie G.,
Furukawa Michael,
Mostashari Farzad
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
health services research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.706
H-Index - 121
eISSN - 1475-6773
pISSN - 0017-9124
DOI - 10.1111/1475-6773.12140
Subject(s) - descriptive statistics , medicine , health information technology , public health , health care , community health center , family medicine , program evaluation , primary care , nursing , political science , statistics , mathematics , public administration , law
Objective Assess the Regional Extension Center ( REC ) program's progress toward its goal of supporting over 100,000 providers in small, rural, and underserved practices to achieve meaningful use ( MU ) of an electronic health record ( EHR ). Data Sources/Study Setting Data collected January 2010 through June 2013 via monitoring and evaluation of the 4‐year REC program. Study Design Descriptive study of 62 REC programs. Data Collection/Extraction Methods Primary data collected from REC s were merged with nine other datasets, and descriptive statistics of progress by practice setting and penetration of targeted providers were calculated. Principal Findings REC s recruited almost 134,000 primary care providers ( PCP s), or 44 percent of the nation's PCP s; 86 percent of these were using an EHR with advanced functionality and almost half (48 percent) have demonstrated MU . Eighty‐three percent of Federally Qualified Health Centers and 78 percent of the nation's Critical Access Hospitals were participating with an REC . Conclusions REC s have made substantial progress in assisting PCP s with adoption and MU of EHR s. This infrastructure supports small practices, community health centers, and rural and public hospitals to use technology for care delivery transformation and improvement.