ONC accelerates extension center grant awards

The Office of the National Coordinator plans to accelerate its timetable for rolling out a set of 70 regional health IT "extension centers," designed to provide training services to help hospitals and medical offices adopt electronic health record systems under the federal health IT incentive plan. To do so, ONC said it would it announce the extension center grant winners in two rounds instead of the three originally planned, with a first round of about 30 grants to be made on Jan. 21, 2010. The remaining 40 or so grants would be announced in a second and final round in March. The ONC had originally planned to make a first set of 20 awards on Dec. 11 of this year, followed by a second and third round of awards by September 2010. National health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal said ONC had decided to compress the timetable to take advantage of the number of "high quality applications," it had received, as well as to ensure healthcare providers had as much time as possible to get the training they needed to quality for incentives under the health IT stimulus plan.