Stimulus funds help create electronic health records
By Bob LaMendola
5:39 PM EST, February 16, 2010
A nonprofit group won $8.5 million in federal stimulus money Monday to help South Florida physicians start the complex process of converting paper files to electronic medical records.
The project by Health Choice Network was the only one in Florida funded with $1 billion in grants from the Obama administration to push doctors lagging far behind in the electronic age.
Government and health officials say computerizing medical records has been shown to reduce duplicated tests and treatments, save money, eliminate many medical errors and ultimately let doctors anywhere call up a patient's record.
Studies estimate that only one-quarter to one-third of doctors use electronic medical records, and local officials said it's probably less in South Florida, which has many small medical practices that are less likely to abandon paper records.
The grant will pay for Health Choice to identify a menu of data systems that work best for physicians, and to educate as many as 1,800 doctors over the next few years in how best to use electronic records. The group will set up a new agency, the South Florida Regional Extension Center, to run the project.
Not until next year will federal grants help doctors buy the gear, and those will be available mainly to those in public health or treating many uninsured patients, said Aventura internist Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger, a member of the South Florida Health Information Exchange, a volunteer board overseeing the project.
"I personally urge doctors not to sit on the fence and wait for someone to say, 'I will buy you a system.' That is not realistic," Wollschlaeger said. "They can buy a system on their own. They can pool their resources and work through a regional system like ours."
The board was created by the biggest health systems in Broward and Miami-Dade counties: tax-assisted Broward Health, Memorial Healthcare, Jackson Memorial, county health departments and doctor groups. Palm Beach County had its own group, which did not win a grant this time.
Staffers of the newly created extension center will do the research on data systems and will run teaching sessions for physicians.
"Doctors really need a lot more to make the best use of the promise that electronic records can offer," said Kevin Kearns, chief executive of Health Choice.
Bob LaMendola can be reached at blamendola@sunsentinel. com or 954-356-4526.
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