Saw this on DotMedNews:
President Obama announced more than $500 million in stimulus money to support construction and renovation of 85 community health centers nationwide and to encourage adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Health Information Technology. It’s part of $2 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds earmarked for health centers.
The President also announced a new demonstration initiative to support the delivery of advanced primary care to Medicare beneficiaries through community health centers (CHCs).
Looks like the money is starting to be released from the government to different areas of health care after much talk through out the year. The impact of the stimulus money is currently unknown as the cost of implementing EHR is much higher than what the stimulus money will compensate. Base on past performance, there are numerous of bad EHR implementation examples. At this point it will be interesting to see how many Health Center bite the bullet as a result of the stimulus money.