Acronyms of Change, Part 2 (REC)

I finished last time with a cautionary note about RECs. So what about RECs? What are they and where do they fit in? RECs are Regional Extension Centers and they were designed as a vehicle to help launch at least 100,000 primary care providers into the meaningful use of EHRs. The Office of the National Coordinator has already invested $677 million into the creation of 62 RECs nationwide. What's the chance there's one in your state? Something else you definitely want to know about!

Back to the cautionary note. If there's funding available through RECs to help me get into EHRs, why wouldn't I want to be a part of that? 


First, note that RECs are destined to get Primary Care Providers meaningfully using EHRs because the feds understood that without PCPs in the game, the overall transformation of health care would fail. RECs are seen by many doctors as a trusted advisor but, make no mistake, there are vendor relationships in the mix and the vendors are going to be those able to serve general health care. That means hospital-based systems, PCPs and the specialists who fall within hospital-based care. RECs, by and large, have not been approached with solutions that serve the interests of outside specialties. 


Second, we need to understand that most PCPs are in hospitals and are part of large health systems. Therefore, the dominant EHR systems do not and will not serve the eye care specialty niche, especially not the independent private-practioner ECP. That means, if we want to help ourselves, we must do more than simply get on board with the local REC and our state HIE. In our experience, the RECs and HIEs want to support eye care as a unique specialty. But we must also want to help ourselves and be prepared to do the work that gets us our desired results. And that leads to today's questions.


If a large health system involved at the REC level could also drive standards for the state HIE, would that likely be in the interest of private practitioners like you? Not likely. And what if you, as an independent, needed to pay the same access fees as larger organizations for the privilege of accessing your state's Health Information Exchange? Would that be a problem? Very likely so! 


Therefore, it is incumbent upon the Optometry profession, its state and national organizations, to demonstrate ways in which independent practitioners may participate in their state HIEs other than by being absorbed into the large health care groups. At EMRlogic, we're doing something about that. How about you?


Alistair Jackson, M.Ed.