Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced on Sept. 15 that 18 health centers in Maine have been awarded $963,623 in funding for health information technology enhancements.
In Aroostook County, Pines Health Services of Caribou will receive $56,791, and Fish River Rural Health of Eagle Lake will get $50,253.
In total, today’s announcement includes $87 million in funding for 1,310 health centers in every U.S. state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Pacific Basin.
“This investment will help unlock healthcare data and put it to work, improving health outcomes and building a better health care system for the American people,” Burwell said.
The funding will support health information technology enhancements to accelerate health centers’ transition to value-based models of care, improve efforts to share and use information and increase engagement in delivery system transformation. All purchases or upgrades of electronic health record systems made with the funding must use technology that is certified by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
This is the first significant investment since 2009 directly awarded to health centers to support the purchase of health information technology.
This funding comes from the Affordable Care Act’s Community Health Center (CHC) Fund, which was extended with bipartisan support in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015.
