Governor David A. Paterson has awarded $105 million in grants to 19 community-based health IT projects, to help guide medical decisions and support the delivery of more coordinated, patient-centered care. Grants range from $1 million to $10 million each and are for a two-year contract period.

“Electronic health records will begin to repair our fragmented delivery system by making sure that accurate patient information is quickly available so that we can improve healthcare quality and efficiency,” said Paterson. “Electronic health records represent a cornerstone in the transformation of our healthcare system. They will boost our efforts to improve the delivery of preventative care while maintaining appropriate safeguards to protect patient privacy.”

The recipients will build a technical infrastructure that will support healthcare improvements for state residents, while ensuring the privacy and security of health information.

The projects selected the following clinical goals to guide the technical implementation ensuring that clinicians gain upfront, consistent value from the vastly improved availability and use of health information, including:

• linking Medicaid data to interoperable electronic health records so that clinicians may electronically receive a patient's Medicaid-reimbursed prescriptions, Medicaid eligibility and recertification period, as well as Medicaid's preferred drugs;
• linking EHRs to the New York State Immunization Registry to ensure seamless reporting of immunization records to improve children’s health.
• helping NY residents have greater control over and access to their personal health information by connecting patients and clinicians through personal health records and other patient-focused tools; and
• implementing quality measurement and reporting capabilities, which includes shared infrastructure among payors and providers to collect and assess information about performance and outcomes to support new prevention and outcome-based reimbursement models. 

“In order for electronic health records and new quality tools to realize their potential, they must be interoperable. Achieving interoperability is as much a function of trust and collaboration among stakeholders and helping clinicians learn how to use information as the technology,” said Lori M. Evans, deputy commissioner of the Office of Health Information Technology Transformation, who will coordinate the work as part of New York’s health IT strategy.

“Interoperability is necessary for compiling the complete experience of a patient’s care and ensuring it is accessible to clinicians and patients as the patient moves through various healthcare settings. It is also critical for cost-effective, timely and standardized data aggregation and reporting for quality measurement, public health reporting, and clinical research,” Evans added.

All projects are required to participate in the statewide collaboration process to align the development of policies and technical approaches to ensure implementation of a robust health information infrastructure as well as advance the health IT agenda in the public interest.

The New York eHealth Collaborative, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to improving healthcare quality and efficiency through health IT, is facilitating the statewide collaborative process as a public-private partnership with the Department of Health.

A full list of the participating entities is available at http://www.nyhealth.gov/technology