With the ever-changing landscape of Health Information Technology, acronyms seem to be popping up like wildfire. One that may have been thrown your way recently is Regional Extension Center funding, or “REC” for short. In a nut-shell the Federal government is providing funding for RECs across the country to provide hands-on consultation to primary care clinics and rural hospitals to reach meaningful use of HIT. In Colorado, these services will be FREE to eligible facilities, including Consortium members!

Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO) was awarded the Federal REC grants from the Office of National Coordinator in February, and are sub-contracting the work to several CO-REC partners, including the Colorado Rural Health Center. As a REC partner, CRHC will be working directly with rural clinics and hospitals in the assessment, roadmapping, implementation, and workflow stages to be able to reach meaningful use and access their own incentive funding.

We are still in the process of working with CORHIO to determine how the REC services will be executed and we will keep you apprised! However, we highly recommend that you consider this valuable resource and contact us if you are in the process or contemplating HIT adoption to learn more about what services are available to you. Please contact Cari Fouts at cf@coruralhealth.org, or David Ginsberg at dg@coruralhealth.org for more information.