CNSG & the Medical Industry

Here's a blurb I saw in the tbtf.org newsletter:
Funding for Health Information Technology
ARRA includes $19 billion in funding to promote the development and implementation of interoperable Health Information Technology (HIT). The $2 billion in discretionary funds and $17 billion in investments and incentives through Medicare and Medicaid will be used to improve the quality of medical care in the U.S. and create jobs in the information technology sector. The effort will be overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services' (DHHS) Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT).
Several new grant and loan programs will provide incentives for the use of HIT. Funding will be made available through many DHHS agencies to build HIT architecture, EHR usage among non-Medicare/Medicaid providers, HIT training and education, telemedicine, interoperable clinical data repositories, privacy technology and best practices and HIT use at public health departments. The department will also spend $300 million to support regional health information exchanges.

Interesting that this came up as just last week when I was in Tallahassee with the Citrus County Chamber of Commerce for their Legislative Day; I sat next to Holly Benson, the Florida Secretary of the Agency for Health Care during lunch. As an IT person we were discussing things not only regarding Small Business Healthcare, but also HIPAA and EMR.

CNSG became HIPAA Security Certified last year and now that there is an initiative for all physicians to implement EMR (Electronic Medical Records), I will be reaching out to the local medical community to let them know that we can assist them with this project. We already have several clients in the medical industry so we have experience with the different aspects of healthcare and IT.

Isn't it funny how IT is not just an acronym anymore but it resides in the core business functions of even our healthcare system now!