On Monday, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT released additional details on how communities can qualify for grants to establish themselves as "beacons" for electronic health record adoption, Government Health IT reports (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 12/14).
Earlier this month, HHS announced that it would award $235 million in federal economic stimulus funding to support the beacon community program (Lipowicz, Federal Computer Week, 12/14). The initiative aims to award 15 grants of up to $20 million to encourage local communities to serve as business models for EHR adoption.
Grant Criteria
In a teleconference, senior ONC adviser Farzad Mostashari said the grant program would target communities that already have a proven history of using health IT to boost:
- Cost efficiency;
- Health care quality; or
- Population health.
Mostashari also said officials are looking for communities that:
- Already use health IT to facilitate care coordination, performance monitoring, practice redesign or other functions;
- Are geographically smaller than states; and
- Consist of both public and private health care providers (Government Health IT, 12/14).
In addition, Mostashari said that beacon communities in urban areas must have a minimum EHR adoption rate of 30%, while rural communities must have a minimum EHR adoption rate of 25%. He said, "The overall rate of EHR adoption in the country is -- should by now be probably close to 20%," adding, "We want communities that are a little bit ahead of the curve" (ONC, Beacon Teleconference transcript, 12/14).
Mostashari said the grant recipients will have the ability to select their own metrics to measure their progress in the program.
Applications for the grants are due Feb. 1, 2010 (Government Health IT, 12/14).