[ Thursday, October 06, 2005 ]
Did You Know: If you're reading this blog because you're involved in the healthcare industry, you've almost certainly heard of Modern Healthcare, the healthcare industry magazine. What you may not know is that you can
subscribe to a service Modern Healthcare offers called "Modern Healthcare's Daily Dose," which is a daily (weekdays, that is) newsbrief email on the 4-6 top stories of the day in healthcare.
In addition to the Daily Doses, occasionally they'll send out "breaking news" emails during the day to alert subscribers to individual stories of interest. I just got one of those today, which I thought would be particularly interesting to readers of this blog:
Breaking News
HHS announces winners of key IT contracts
HHS named a trio of contract winners charged with advancing the department's
aggressive information technology platform, including widespread implementation
of electronic medical records. The organizations are the American National
Standards Institute (ansi.org),
for IT standards and harmonization; the Certification Commission for Healthcare
Information Technology (cchit.org),
an alliance of well-known healthcare IT associations, for compliance
certification; and the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration,
formed by the Research Triangle Institute (rti.org),
for privacy and security issues. The contracts are worth a total of $17.5
million. HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt disclosed the contract winners in a speech
this morning to the National Quality Forum, and at deadline, HHS was holding a
conference call for the news media to provide more details. The department
delayed announcing the winners from a Sept. 30 deadline. It requested proposals
in June.
In his speech at the NQF, Leavitt discussed accelerating the widespread
adoption of EMRs, in advance of President Bush's 10-year deadline, and described
the contracts as "a very important part of moving forward with the vision and
mission we share." The contracts come a day before the first scheduled meeting
of the 16-member American Health Information Community, which is expected to
steer development of a national health IT network.
UPDATE: In addition to these contracts, there's more (from BNA, registration required):
Meanwhile, HHS's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality announced the
award of more than $22.3 million to 16 grantees to implement health IT systems
to improve safety and quality of care. AHRQ said these projects will help the
agency "use the results from these real-world laboratories that are crucial to
moving forward with broader implementation of health IT in American health
care."
Jeff [11:10 AM]
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