Virginia Governor Announces Health Technology Grants

Governor Timothy M. Kaine today announced the award of two health information technology grants to projects designed to expand the use of electronic health records in Virginia: Centra Health in Lynchburg and the Northern Virginia Regional Health Information Organization (NOVARHIO) in Fairfax County.

Each program has been awarded $150,000 through a grant program initiated by Governor Kaine last year with funding provided by the General Assembly. Both projects have found matching funds that combined with the state's award of $300,000 create a total investment of more than $550,000.

"These modest health IT grants will improve our ability to deliver high quality health care to Virginians through the expansion of electronic health records," said Governor Kaine. "This investment continues efforts in the Commonwealth to help providers deliver best care to patients and expand our health IT infrastructure."

Secretary of Health and Human Resources Marilyn Tavenner and Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra recognized the grant recipients today at a ceremony with the Virginia Chapter of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.

Centra Health has proposed a project focused on allowing physicians in the Lynchburg area to use the American College of Cardiologist's Program for Improving Continuous Cardiac Care through an expansion of their electronic medical records. This project improves the ability of physicians to deliver high quality health care to cardiology patients in the Lynchburg region by providing physicians access to the most current, nationally recognized best practices for cardiac care.

NOVARHIO, in partnership with INOVA Health System and Erickson Senior Living, will be the first to create a mechanism to ensure electronic access to patient medication histories in the emergency room. NOVARHIO also will simultaneously launch a program to educate citizens in northern Virginia about the need for a personal health record.

These grants complete the award of Health IT Grants started last year with three $250,000 awards to CareSpark in Southwest Virginia, the Community Care Network of Virginia in Southside, and MedVirginia in Central Virginia. These programs have already used their state funding to help draw down over $6 million in federal funding.