"These technologies have the ability to dramatically alter the way health care is delivered, making us healthier in the short term and eliminating duplicative services and administrative costs in health care in the long term," Bredesen said.
Earlier this year, Bredesen established the e-Health Advisory Council to drive improvement in the quality, safety and efficiency of health care for all consumers by providing leadership, education, support and engaging the entire community to accelerate the implementation of e-Health solutions.
Ongoing projects include:
- Tennessee is one of nine states participating in development of nationwide best practices for regional health information organizations. The effort will produce public domain information on best practices in the areas of governance, structure, financing, operations, and health information exchange policies.
- The state has committed $1 million to support the Tri-Cities' CareSpark initiative to develop an interoperable standards-based network for the secure exchange of health-care information.
- Almost $9 million is committed to the MidSouth eHealth Alliance in Memphis, which is working toward a model for electronic medical records that could be applied nationally.
- TennCare, Tennessee's expanded Medicaid program providing health insurance coverage to 1.2 million Tennesseans, has also implemented an electronic medical record initiative in partnership with Shared Health, a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee.
- Support for the Eastern Tennessee Health Information Network, an electronic medical record project in Knoxville, which is part of a national effort to launch a program allowing hospitals, physicians, labs, and other health care organizations access to patient records to improve patient care and save money. Working through the Patient Safety Institute, a grant of $985,000 was made to the group.
