42 U.S.C. § 300jj–32 — Health information technology implementation assistance

(a) Health information technology extension program To help health care providers adopt, implement, and effectively use certified EHR technology that allows electronic exchange and use of health information, the Secretary, acting through the Office of the National Coordinator, must establish a health information technology extension program to provide health IT assistance services through the Department of Health and Human Services. The National Coordinator must consult other federal agencies with demonstrated experience and expertise in information technology services, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in developing and running this program. (b) Health Information Technology Research Center (1) The Secretary must create a Health Information Technology Research Center ("the Center") to provide technical assistance and develop or recognize best practices, supporting and speeding up efforts to adopt, implement, and effectively use health IT that complies with the standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria adopted under section 300jj-14. (2) The Center must incorporate input from other federal agencies with relevant IT expertise (such as NIST), from health IT users - providers, their support and clerical staff, and others involved in coordinating patient care, from the health care and health IT industry - and from others as appropriate. (3) The Center's purposes are to: provide a forum to exchange knowledge and experience; speed up transferring lessons learned from existing public and private sector initiatives, including federally supported ones; assemble, analyze, and widely share evidence and experience on adopting, implementing, and effectively using health IT, including through the regional centers in subsection (c); give technical assistance for establishing and evaluating regional and local health information networks that let information flow electronically across care settings and improve care quality; give technical assistance for developing and sharing solutions to barriers to exchanging electronic health information; and learn effective strategies for adopting and using health IT in medically underserved communities. (c) Health information technology regional extension centers (1) The Secretary must help create and support regional centers that give technical assistance and share best practices and information from the Center, to support and speed up adopting, implementing, and effectively using compliant health IT. This work must stay consistent with the National Coordinator's strategic plan (as available) under section 300jj-11. (2) Regional centers must be affiliated with a U.S.-based nonprofit institution or organization (or group of them) that applies for and is awarded financial assistance; individual awards are decided on merit. (3) Regional centers aim to enhance and promote health IT adoption through: helping providers nationwide implement, effectively use, upgrade, and maintain health IT (including electronic health records); broad participation from industry, universities, and state governments; actively sharing best practices and research on implementing, using, upgrading, and maintaining health IT to improve care quality and protect the privacy and security of health information; participating in health information exchanges to the extent practicable; using expertise and capability from federal agencies outside the Department, when appropriate; and integrating health IT (including electronic health records) into initial and ongoing training for health professionals and others in health care whose work helps improve quality through accurate electronic use and exchange of health information. (4) Each regional center should aim to provide assistance and education to all providers in its region, but must prioritize direct assistance first to: public or not-for-profit hospitals or critical access hospitals; federally qualified health centers (as defined in section 1395x(aa)(4)); entities located in rural and other areas serving uninsured, underinsured, and medically underserved individuals (urban or rural); and individual or small-group practices (or consortiums of them) primarily focused on primary care. (5) The Secretary may provide financial support to a regional center for a period of no more than four years, and generally may not provide more than 50 percent of the capital and annual operating and maintenance funds needed to create and maintain a center - except when national economic conditions would make that cost-share requirement harmful to the program, and after notifying Congress of the justification for waiving it. (6) Not later than 90 days after February 17, 2009, the Secretary had to publish in the Federal Register a draft description of the program for establishing regional centers, including: a detailed explanation of the program and its goals; procedures applicants must follow; criteria for determining qualified applicants; and the maximum support levels expected to be available to centers. (7) The Secretary must subject each application to merit review, considering at minimum: the applicant's ability to provide assistance and use health IT appropriate to the needs of particular categories of health care providers; the types of service to be provided; geographic diversity and extent of service area; and the percentage of funding and amount of in-kind commitment from other sources. (8) Every two years, an evaluation panel appointed by the Secretary - made up of private experts unconnected with the center, plus federal officials - must evaluate each regional center against the objective in paragraph (3). The Secretary may not continue funding a regional center unless its evaluation is overall positive. (9) After a center's second year of assistance, it may keep receiving support if it has received positive evaluations and the Secretary finds that continuing federal funding is in the best interest of providing health IT extension services.