Three Quarters of Vermont's PCPs Sign Up

Three-Quarters of Vermont’s Primary Care Practitioners Sign Up for Electronic Health Records

Montpelier, Vt. (June 7) – About 75 percent of Vermont’s primary care practitioners have signed up to receive assistance from Vermont Information Technology Leaders, Inc. (VITL) in adopting and implementing an electronic health records (EHR) system and using that system to improve patient care.

VITL is an independent, non-profit organization that helps Vermont’s health care providers with health information technology. VITL was selected by the federal government in February 2010 as the sole health information technology regional extension center (REC) serving Vermont. VITL received $7 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is using that money to provide REC services to Vermont primary care practitioners free of charge.

More than 750 Vermont primary care practitioners have signed agreements with VITL, stating that they plan to add electronic health records systems to their practices. VITL will help practitioners achieve this goal by providing education and on-site guidance from staff who are experienced with planning and implementing these systems.

Once an EHR is active in a practice, VITL’s assistance continues. VITL guides practices in using the EHR to measure and improve the quality of patient care, thus helping health care professionals become “meaningful users” of their EHRs and qualifying for the federal EHR incentive program under either Medicare or Medicaid.

“We’ve achieved one of the highest percentages in the nation of primary care practitioners planning to acquire an EHR and becoming meaningful users,” said David Cochran, MD, VITL’s president and CEO. “These practitioners will be well positioned to be active participants in the Vermont Blueprint for Health as well as to receive meaningful use incentives.  Their ability to better track and coordinate care will have a large impact on improving the quality of health care in Vermont.”

VITL will continue to strive toward enrolling as many of Vermont’s 1,000 primary care practitioners as possible, Dr. Cochran said. “Even though we have been very successful in signing up Vermont primary care practitioners, we still have funding available to assist even more. Incentive payments from Medicare are now being made to practitioners who have achieved the first stage of meaningful use, so this is an excellent time to begin the process of implementing an EHR.”        

For more information about VITL’s regional extension center services, visit http://vitl.net/rec