ONC sets meaningful-use goal for rural providers

Two federal officials with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology are calling for an all-out effort to ensure that at least 1,000 small, rural and federally designated critical-access hospitals become meaningful users of health IT by 2014.

The "call to action" was posted on Health IT Buzz, the ONC's official blog, by Mat Kendall, director of the ONC's Office of Provider Adoption Support, and Leila Samy, the ONC's rural health IT coordinator.

There were 1,987 rural hospitals across the U.S. in 2010, according to the American Hospital Association's 2012 AHA Hospital Statistics reference book.

According to Kendall and Samy, rural hospitals with fewer than 50 beds and critical-access hospitals "face unique challenges" not only because of their remote locations, small size and low patient volumes but also because of limited workforces, clinician shortages, tight finances and, in some cases, lack of adequate or affordable data connectivity.

"In these settings, the value of health IT becomes particularly evident," the blog authors said. "In rural areas where distances between clinics are great and specialists may be a travel-day from a patient's home, health IT can give healthcare providers instant access to information necessary to make timely treatment decisions that can save lives. For example, when a parent takes his child to the local, rural primary-care provider, this provider may send the family on a trip to see a specialist, which could mean a few hours of driving and a day of missed work for the parent. All too often, when the family gets there, the specialist cannot find the paperwork."

Rural and small hospitals and rural physician practices have traditionally lagged behind their urban counterparts in health IT adoption—observations quantified by two studies released in April.

But, according to the ONC announcement, more than 1,220 critical-access and rural hospitals and more than 5,644 clinicians who work in them have enrolled with a federally funded health information technology regional extension center to receive IT assistance toward meeting meaningful-use goals and receiving federal EHR incentive payments.