ONC is launching the first in a series of web pages tailored to meet the Health IT needs of Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) and small, Rural Hospitals (RHs). This effort is in support of the ONC goal to see 1000 CAHs and RHs achieve Meaningful Use by the end of 2014. The pages are filled with resources, lessons from the field, Health IT implementation support tools and more. Federal funding opportunities for Health IT infrastructure (e.g., hardware, software, broadband) are also included on these pages.

“We’ve witnessed CAHs and small rural hospitals make great progress—As of February 2013, over 700 received a CMS Meaningful Use incentive payment. A key strategy for supporting CAHs and small, rural hospitals is convening the Rural Community of Practice. This tremendous group of leaders and experts from across the country is dedicated to identifying the most pressing barriers that rural safety-net hospitals face, developing tools and resources for overcoming these challenges and then hand-picking the best among these tools to make available on healthit.gov,” says Leila Samy, ONC’s Rural Health IT Coordinator.

Barry Little, MD, Physician Advisor & Informaticist for the Kentucky REC, serves on the nationwide leadership team developing the content for the first waves of Health IT content tailored to CAHs and RHs.

“Dr. Little is a true expert. He is dedicated to the needs of the Kentucky rural health care providers that he serves. Dr. Little is also a part of the leadership team collaborating to support CAHs and small, rural hospitals nationwide. He offer a vision that is grounded; he contributes a structured path forward for the task forces on which he serves, enabling them to craft a successful path forward and deliver ambitious results. He is among the select group of individuals from across the country who received a special award signed by the National Coordinator for Health IT, titled: Critical Access & Rural Hospital Champion. The award is in recognition of groundbreaking collaborative efforts with public and private sector partners to accelerate Meaningful Use among CAHs and RHs nationwide,” says Leila Samy.

Resources:

To access these web pages, visit: http://www.healthit.gov/ruralhealth. Stay tuned more for updates.

We invite you to participate in the nationwide call to action in support of CAHs and rural hospitals by sharing comments and success stories. Follow this link to the challenge and then scroll to the bottom of the page to “Leave a Reply.”