HHS And ONC Invest $28 Million In Health Information Exchange Grants

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced this morning an important Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) funding opportunity, which is part of a Department-wide effort to achieve the safe and secure exchange and use of electronic health information to improve health and transform care as outlined in the Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap, Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap Version 1.0.

This new funding opportunity announcement (FOA) will invest $28 million to increase the adoption and use of interoperable health IT tools and services to support the exchange of health information. Ten to twelve new awards will be made in the form of cooperative agreements to states, territories, or state designated entities (SDE) to continue work under the same intent as the original State Health Information Exchange (HIE) Program.

As part of the program, we seek to enable send, receive, find, and use health information in a manner that is appropriate, secure, timely, and reliable for both sender and receiver. A variety of use cases could fall into this definition including a long-term care provider’s ability to access lab results or radiological films after a patient was discharged from a hospital, as is the case in Colorado, or by linking the state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Plan, as has been done in Maryland...