Purdue Healthcare Advisors celebrates National Health IT Week Sept. 16-20
September 18, 2013
This is being sent on behalf of Purdue Healthcare Advisors
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — (Monday, September 16, 2013) — Purdue Healthcare Advisors (PHA) and others across the U.S. have joined together to celebrate National Health Information Technology Week, Sept. 16-20, to mark the important role health information technology plays in improving health care delivery.
“For the past three years, Purdue has worked to ensure that health IT in Indiana is integrated, interactive, interoperable and intelligent,” said Randy Hountz, director of the Purdue Regional Extension Center, a division of PHA. “We support National Health IT Week because healthcare reform is not possible without system-wide adoption of health IT to improve the quality of healthcare delivery, increase patient safety, decrease medical errors, and strengthen the interaction between patients and healthcare providers.”
Today more than 38 percent of physicians nationwide have adopted a basic electronic health records system and more than 145,000 providers — supported by Regional Extension Centers nationwide — are moving through the stages of Meaningful Use. Meaningful Use (MU) is a set of federal standards that governs the use of electronic health records (EHRs). The Purdue Regional Extension Center (PurdueREC), a division of PHA, has enrolled more than 2,500 providers in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Meaningful Use Incentives Program; has helped more than 1,500 providers and over 50 hospitals collect more than $105 million in government incentives; and has provided direct financial support in excess of $10 million to Indiana providers achieving “meaningful use” of EHRs.
As specialists in working with all EHR vendors certified by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, the PurdueREC provides direct, hands-on assistance to MU incentives-eligible providers in hospitals, clinics, and large or small provider practices. Assistance includes Meaningful Use attestation support, metrics monitoring, training, readiness assessments, and workflow analyses.
To support providers as they attest to EHR Meaningful Use, PHA directs much of its effort into ensuring providers are compliant with the MU program’s stringent security guidelines, which are designed to safeguard patient health information. To that end, PHA provides Meaningful Use Security Compliancy Assessments; HIPAA Security Rule Compliancy Assessments; as well as support for encryption; secure wireless migration; disaster recovery planning; and vulnerability analysis.
About Purdue Healthcare Advisors
Purdue Healthcare Advisors (PHA) is a healthcare consulting resource from Purdue University specializing in affordable assistance to healthcare associations and providers focused on improving care, managing margins and facilitating compliance. As not-for-profit consultants aligned with healthcare transformation, PHA combines the global resources of Purdue with deep clinical healthcare knowledge, advanced Lean methodologies, EHR best practices, and Health IT security/privacy expertise. www.pha.purdue.edu
About National Health Information Technology Week
Now in its eighth year, National Health IT Week is a collaborative forum assembling key healthcare constituents—vendors, provider organizations, payers, pharmaceutical/biotech companies, government agencies, industry/professional associations, research foundations, and consumer protection groups— working together to elevate national attention to the necessity of advancing health IT. www.healthitweek.org
