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AHRQ National Resource Center for Health Information Technology
Add ThisAHRQ and Health IT
AHRQ and Health Information Technology

As the nation's lead research agency on health care quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness, AHRQ plays a critical role in the drive to adopt health IT.  By developing secure and private electronic health records and making health information available electronically when and where it is needed, health IT can improve the quality of care, even as it makes health care more cost-effective.

The AHRQ health IT initiative includes contracts with Six States that are building out our existing health IT networks and grants to more than 100 communities, hospitals, providers and health care systems. These projects constitute a real-world laboratory for examining health IT at work.

The goals of AHRQ's health IT initiative are to:

  • Help clinicians develop higher-quality, safer health care.
  • Put the patient more squarely at the center of health care.
  • Stimulate planning and implementation of health IT, especially in rural and underserved areas.
  • Identify the most successful approaches, as well as barriers, to implementation.
  • Make the business case for health IT by evaluating costs and benefits.

AHRQ helped lay the groundwork for the health IT transformation:

  • Supported more than 30 years of research to develop medical informatics tools and standards.
  • Led the way in identifying patient safety issues and demonstrating the importance of decision support systems for physicians and others in a time of rapidly growing medical findings.
  • Spearheaded the Federal government's efforts to identify and measure health care quality. Health IT will have an important role in improving health care quality by providing clinicians with reliable, up-to-the-minute treatment information when they need it, and by expanding our knowledge base for determining treatment effectiveness.

In addition to stimulating the growth of health IT, the initiative is designed to elicit the greatest possible amount of information about real-world experience with health IT. This information will help providers who are considering investing in health IT, as well as policy makers seeking to encourage health IT.

Through its National Resource Center, AHRQ will serve as a trusted source of information and technical assistance regarding health IT.
More information at FAQs.
Helping Rural and Small Communities

People in rural and small communities frequently face barriers to getting good, appropriate care when needed because physicians, hospitals, and other providers are in short supply and public transportation is scarce.  Recognizing these challenges, AHRQ's health IT initiative funds many projects aimed at developing and implementing health IT in rural regions that will:

  • Address unique barriers to IT implementation.
  • Build and leverage telemedicine and telehealth networks.
  • Integrate patient information with pharmacy, laboratory, scheduling, and health insurance information.
  • Improve the safety, quality, and satisfaction of patients and providers.
  • Foster community and regional partnerships and collaborations for health information exchange.
State and Regional Demonstration Projects

AHRQ has awarded contracts to Six States - Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Utah - totaling $34.70 million to help them lead the way in regional health information exchange and collaboration.  These states are expanding networks for communication and information-sharing among:

  • Health care providers
  • Laboratories
  • Major purchasers of health care
  • Public and private payers
  • Hospitals
  • Ambulatory care facilities
  • Home health care providers
  • Long-term care providers.

 

The goals of these projects are to:

  • Put information and communication technologies to work so that clinicians can get patient information at the point of care.
  • Develop a health information exchange that connects the systems of various local health care providers so that they can coordinate care better.
  • Plan, develop, implement, and evaluate a patient indexing system that allows public and private health care providers to share patient data.
  • Build and evaluate a state-based regional data sharing and interoperability service that links health care organizations across counties.
  • Expand and refine an existing statewide network that conveys patient information electronically.
More information about state and regional networks.

 

 
 
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