HHS announces $162 million in 16 state HIE grants

Posted on Mar 24, 2010 in Records Management News

HHS announces $162 mil­lion in 16 state HIE grants
March 15, 2010 | Diana Manos, Senior Editor

HHS Sec­re­tary Kath­leen Sebe­lius
WASHINGTON – The Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices announced Mon­day $162 mil­lion in awards to 16 states and qual­i­fied state des­ig­nated enti­ties for the State Health Infor­ma­tion Exchange Coop­er­a­tive Agree­ment Program.

The fund­ing is part of $2 bil­lion allot­ted under the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act (ARRA) to advance health­care IT adoption.

HHS Sec­re­tary Kath­leen Sebe­lius said with the awards announced Mon­day, every state and eli­gi­ble ter­ri­tory has now been awarded funds under this program.

“These crit­i­cal invest­ments will help unleash the power of health infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy to cut costs, elim­i­nate paper­work and help doc­tors deliver high-quality, coor­di­nated care to patients,” Sebe­lius said.
“States are impor­tant part­ners in improv­ing and expand­ing our elec­tronic health records sys­tem,” she said. “By improv­ing the secure exchange of elec­tronic health records between providers and hos­pi­tals within and across states, these awards mark a sig­nif­i­cant step in bring­ing our health sys­tem into the 21st century.”

David Blu­men­thal, national coor­di­na­tor for health infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy said Monday’s awards are crit­i­cal to enabling care coor­di­na­tion and improv­ing the qual­ity and effi­ciency of healthcare.

With all states now empow­ered to start their jour­ney toward iden­ti­fy­ing inno­v­a­tive ways to break down these bar­ri­ers that pre­vent the seam­less exchange of infor­ma­tion, we can give patients the access to care they deserve and expect, Blu­men­thal said.

On Feb­ru­ary 12, 2010, HHS awarded $385 mil­lion to 40 states and state des­ig­nated enti­ties for the state HIE grant pro­gram. The awards announced Mon­day com­plete the award­ing of coop­er­a­tive agree­ments funded by this pro­gram, Sebe­lius said.

Agency of Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion (FL) $20,738,582

The Mary­land Depart­ment of Health and Men­tal Hygiene $9,313,924

New Jer­sey Health Care Facil­i­ties Financ­ing Author­ity $11,408,594

South Car­olina Depart­ment of Health & Human Ser­vices $9,576,408

Iowa Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health $8,375,000

Idaho Health Data Exchange $5,940,500

State of North Dakota, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Depart­ment $5,343,733

State of Alaska $4,963,063

Nebraska Depart­ment of Admin­is­tra­tive Ser­vices $6,837,180

South Dakota Depart­ment of Health $6,081,750

Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health, State of CT $7,297,930

State of Mis­sis­sippi $10,387,000

Indi­ana Health Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy, Inc. $10,300,000

HealthShare Mon­tana $5,767,926

Texas Health and Human Ser­vices Com­mis­sion $28,810,208

Louisiana Health Care Qual­ity Forum $10,583,000

Total $161,724,798