Morehouse, state work to improve use of electronic medical records
The state health agency and Morehouse School of Medicine are using millions of federal stimulus dollars to help doctors in low-income areas move from paper to electronic medical records.
Officials say the move could help reduce medical errors, improve communications between doctors and specialists, and bring cutting-edge medical practices to these under-served areas.
"This will help lower, and hopefully eliminate, the disparate gap for technology, health care and health" in these areas, said Dr. Dominic Mack, the project director for Morehouse. "We want to put them on more of an equal playing field."
Morehouse received a $19.5 million federal stimulus grant earlier this year and expects within a few weeks to begin working in under-served areas across the state, he said. The program is assembling outreach and education teams, Mack said, and he expects it could help 5,200 doctors, hospitals and other providers, many in metro Atlanta.
The project will help those health care providers select an electronic medical records system, train workers and implement the system. The project money does not pay for the systems, but health care providers can qualify for separate Medicaid and Medicare dollars to help in the purchase.
The grant money is also aimed at training health information technology workers in under-served areas. Some of the effort will serve areas not deemed low-income, Mack said.
Many doctors' offices in low-income areas have limited technology and rely largely on paper medical records. That raises problems in tracking a patient's medical history and transferring records to another facility or another doctor's office, he said.
Mack said if people get sick or injured while on vacation in another state, doctors there might not learn of the patients' allergies or the medications they take. Such problems contribute to numerous deaths, he said.
Morehouse, which has a history of working in under-served areas, will work in concert with the Georgia Department of Community Health. The department received a $13 million grant earlier this year to help providers advance the use of health information technology and train workers in the use of such technology.
The Georgia effort is part of a nearly $1 billion federal investment to help the health information technology industry grow and train workers for health care jobs.
