HHS awards almost $40 million

Health Management Technology,  Dec, 2005  

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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in early October awarded three contracts and 16 grants to nudge the adoption of health information technology. The contracts totaled $17.5 million. They included:

* $3.3 million to the Washington, D.C.-based American National Standards Institute to develop and test a process to create standards that will support interoperability;

* $2.7 million to the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology to develop programs to certify that health IT products meet certain criteria for functionality;

* $11.5 million to Durham, N.C.-based Research Triangle Institute International to study privacy and security practices that may hinder the exchange of health data.

HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality awarded more than $22.3 million in grants to 16 recipients to implement health IT projects. Eleven of the 16 grants were awarded to small and rural communities and most of the grants total nearly $1.5 million over three years. Examples of projects receiving the grants include:

* Integrating health information and communications systems at Franklin Foundation Hospital in coastal Louisiana devastated by Hurricane Katrina;

* Developing an integrated EHR for children with special healthcare needs at the University of Tennessee and its partners;

* Implementing a regional health information exchange within a collaborative of rural hospitals, clinics and providers across a 14,000-square mile remote area of Nebraska.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Nelson Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group