HHS grants $36 Million To Support Health Center Controlled Networks For HIT Adoption

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is determined to empower healthcare information technology (HIT) adoption and move towards its interoperability objectives. To that end, HHS has declared it is granting more than $36 million in funding to 50 Health Center Controlled Networks (HCCNs) situated in forty-one states and Puerto Rico for health information technology (HIT) adoption.

As Health IT results reported, acquiring the target of interoperability by 2024 rests on the flow of data. This offer is made to assist those health centers that confront key obstacles to improving interoperability.

The final objective in helping Health Center Controlled Networks (HCCNs) is to make better care access, quality, and price efficiency, prominently in medically underserved communities HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell stated. More than 1,020 engaging healthcare centers across the fifty states and Puerto Rico are hoped to take benefit from the funding, which funds the Federal Health Information Technology Strategic Plan.

“Health Center Controlled Networks are a primary tool in offering quality primary care to medically underserved communities,” claimed Burwell. “By utilizing these networks, individual health centers can work together to share resources, leverage purchasing power, and make better access to HIT (health information technology), leading to improved care experience for susceptible populations.”

The Health Center Controlled Networks support health centers to embrace and execute certified EHR technology; modify comprehensive, integrated information collection, analysis, and reporting; meet the needs of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive program; and make better clinical and operational quality, decrease health disparities, and make better the population health through health information technology, specifically in underserved regions.

“These awards indicate our continued concentration on advancing health center quality and accountability across entire health centers by motivating the adoption of HIT,” claimed Health Jim Macrae, the Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Acting Administrator.

Almost 1,400 health centers operate over 9,800 service delivery locations in every USA state, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific Basin. These health centers hire more than 170,000 staff that provides care for approximately 23 million sufferers.