The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has affirmed AAFP's work in the electronic health record arena with a $100,000 grant for the Academy's EHR pilot project.
"This grant will help support technological changes to enable family practice doctors to participate fully in a more modern and efficient health care system," said CMS administrator Mark McClellan, M.D. "Our support for the AAFP initiative is an important part of HHS' broader program to promote the use of information technology to update our health care system and organize it around the best interest of patient care."
The pilot project, under way since January, recruited six family physicians to test EHR hardware and software to help find and fix the glitches that come with EHR implementation in a family medicine setting. Go to http://www.aafp.org/fpr/20040600/1.html to read a story about the EHR pilot project.
David C. Kibbe, M.D., director of AAFP's Center for Health Information Technology, said the grant is significant beyond the dollar amount. "This is a double win for all of us," he said, and signifies "the train is leaving the station."
"We will get increasing attention and support from a variety of places, including CMS, for work that is done implementing standards, equipping practices with affordable EHR systems and finding solutions to barriers that have slowed down market growth," said Kibbe.
"We also win because we may prevent legislators and governmental agencies, who are frustrated with the slow pace of IT adoption, from mandating standards and programs that might halt progress or increase costs of production and sales."
To read a May 28 HHS press release about the grant, go to http://www.cms.gov/media/press/release.asp?Counter=1075.
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