The Pennsylvania eHealth Partnership Authority has awarded some $3.8 million in grant money to develop to bring more healthcare providers onto the eHealth network. The P3N enables electronic health information exchange (eHIE) across the state through the connection of healthcare providers to health information organizations (HIO), and the connection of HIOs to the P3N.
The funding for these programs was made available through a grant from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and is being administered in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS). Under the terms of the federal grant, CMS will provide 90% of the onboarding grant, with the remaining 10% paid by DHS.
The awardees include: HealthShare Exchange of Southeastern Pennsylvania, Clinical Connect HIE, and Mt. Nittany Medical Center. Some of that money will go to improvements to a portal that will allow health providers who don’t have electronic medical records to access and send protected health information on shared patients during transitions of care.
The grant money will also go to offsetting network setup costs, improve standards of care and add to care coordination plans for Medicaid.
“As more HIOs join the P3N along with their connected providers, more patients will experience better coordination of their care, faster access to their clinical results, and reduced redundancy of medical tests,” said Kelly Hoover Thompson, Acting Executive Director of the Authority.
