SOCIAL SECURITY AWARDS EHR DOCTORS $1 MILLION IN RECOVERY ACT

Contracts For Electronic Medical Records to Provider of Open source technology Services

Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, announced that EHR Doctors, Inc. and fifteen other companies (consisting of a combination of healthcare providers, health-IT systems integrators, and networks) have received a total of $17.4 million in contract awards to provide electronic medical records (EMRs) to the agency. These EMRs, which will be sent through the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), “will improve our disability programs and provide better service to the public,” Commissioner Astrue said. “We’ve seen a significant increase in disability applications. To process them, the agency sends more than 15 million requests annually for medical records to healthcare providers. This largely paper-bound workload is generally the most time-consuming part of the disability-decision process. The use of health IT will dramatically improve the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of this process, reducing the cost of making a disability decision for both the medical community and the American taxpayer,” he added.

EHR Doctors was pleased with the announcement. “Our unique open-source approach to health IT and Health Information Exchnage will provide our partner hospitals with a valuable system for a fraction of the cost,” said Gerard Reeder, vice-president of business development of EHR Doctors. EHR Doctors will connect to Social Security using the NHIN’s open-source Connect software.  This contract with Social Security is a remarkable opportunity to demonstrate the power and reliability of open-source medical software and the communities that support it.

The contract awards are funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It will require EHR Doctors and its partner hospitals, with a patient’s authorization, to send medical records through the NHIN to the Social Security Administration. The NHIN, a safe and secure method for receiving access to EMRs over the Internet, is an initiative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services supported by multiple government agencies and private-sector entities including EHR Doctors.

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