Supporting Nurse Practitioners as ‘Priority Primary Care Practitioners’

By Susan McBride, PhD, RN, professor at Texas Tech University Health Science Center School of Nursing

It’s important for nurses to understand the Medicare and Medicaid incentives to implement electronic health records (EMRs) and to move to their “meaningful use,” as well as the purpose of the Regional Extension Centers created to support nurse practitioners and other “priority primary care providers” in the implementation process.

Dr. Mari Tietze, John Delaney, and I are fortunate to be involved in two of the Regional Extension Centers in Texas. We believe that nursing professionals have many contributions to make in the evolving electronic highway in the U.S. We will blog later about our roles as nursing informaticists in the Regional Extension Center program.

What are ‘Regional Extension Centers’? Under the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) Health Information Technology Initiative to support getting providers to meaningful use on electronic health records, the ONC has established Regional Extension Centers. There are 60 Regional Extension Centers that will furnish assistance to providers in specific geographic services areas covering virtually all of the U.S. A total of $643 million is devoted to these centers.

The purpose of the Regional Extension Centers is to support priority primary care practitioners in priority settings to implement and use EMRs according to the meaningful use requirements outlined in our previous post (below is a screenshot illustrating one example of how an EMR might align with meaningful use requirements; click image to enlarge). The goal of the program is to provide federally subsidized outreach and support […]