Georgia hospital group, Kansas REC offer preferred EHRs

The Georgia Hospital Association, a non-profit trade association of 170 hospitals in the state, has made available at a reduced member price electronic health record technology from Prognosis Health Information Systems.

Georgia hospitals can establish the ChartAccess comprehensive electronic health record (EHR), a hosted system on a shared server at the Georgia Hospital Health Services, a subsidiary of the state hospital association.

Hospitals in the state that take up the offer can get on the fast track for incentive payments for the adoption and meaningful use of certified EHRs, according to Glenn Pearson, executive vice president of the Georgia Hospital Association.

“We wanted to be able to provide access to an EHR solution that could really help our hospitals jump on the electronic health records bandwagon,” he said in a March 15 announcement.

The software-as-a-service model means hospitals can get the system operational in a matter of months so they can still qualify for the full share of incentive funds starting in 2011.

Prognosis delivers the ChartAccess tool through a cloud computing model, in which the software is made available as a service over an encrypted health information network, Pearson said.

In another announcement, the Kansas Foundation for Medical Care Inc., a quality improvement organization which is also the regional extension center for the state, has selected eight EHR preferred vendors which offer, among other services, reduced equipment, consulting and software costs and pre-negotiated standard contracts, making it easier and faster for healthcare providers to adopt EHRs and become meaningful users.

The 62 national regional extension centers, which the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has funded, supply local technical assistance to physicians and small practices to help them overcome the hurdles to digitizing their medical records.

Of the selected vendors, six have accepted all the terms of the agreement with the REC. Those vendors include Cerner, eClinicalWorks, e-MDs and SuccessEHS. Two others, NextGen and Sage, have amended selected terms of the agreement.