sharing network news from FierceHealthIT

I don't know about you, but I'm truly sick of hearing the words "health IT" and "legislation" in the same sentence. Hey, federal and state lawmakers, it's sweet of you to care, but really, you Read more...

In a move heralded as a first of its kind, this week New York City officials announced plans to give free EMR technology to medical practices for whom 30 percent or more of their patient encounters are Medicaid-insured or uninsured. City officials say that they're the first state or large local government they're aware of which has tried this strategy (though states are arguably moving in this direction with e-prescribing technology). The city will distribute the software to about 1,500 …

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Here's a nice example of voluntary collaboration between state governments. A group of states who got federal grants for Medicaid IT improvement have agreed to share their project results with other states, giving the others a leg up on the often-onerous development process. Twenty-seven states got a total of $103.6 million from CMS earlier this year to develop EMRs and related systems. Now about half of those states have begun sharing their work with states that didn't get the grants. …

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Marking the first collaboration between the agency and a state government, the U.S. Department of Defense has kicked off a project under which it will share health information with Florida's government. Under the terms of the agreement, the DoD will work with the Tampa Bay Regional Health Information Organization to create an interoperable data sharing network. The project will be overseen by the state's lead health agency, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. To make things …

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