The State of Tennessee to Promote Health Information Technology Planning and Implementation Projects
The State of Tennessee intends to submit an application for the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009, State Grants to Promote Health Information Technology Planning
and Implementation Projects.
The Office of e-Health Initiatives will support HIP TN’s efforts as Commissioner Dave Goetz, Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration joins the partnership’s board of directors with Melissa Hargiss, director of the Office of e-Health Initiatives, serving HIP TN in an ex-officio capacity.
For more information, visit www.tn.gov/ehealth and click the HIP TN link. The Office of e-Health Initiatives is the single coordinating authority for the exchange of electronic health information in Tennessee and works to improve the health of Tennesseans by ensuring providers have complete patient information at the point of care. For more information on the Office of e-Health Initiatives, visit www.tn.gov/ehealth.
In their latest newsletter, Tennessee is listed among the top five states that have most improved electronic prescribing programs and was recognized in Washington by Surescripts, the nation’s largest digital health information network.
The Memphis Business Journal reported that states were ranked by the number of prescriptions they routed electronically over the Surescripts network in 2008 as a percentage of the total number of prescriptions eligible for electronic routing. Tennessee health care organizations filed 1.8 million prescriptions electronically in 2008. That’s a 276 percent jump from the 478,602 electronic prescriptions filed in 2007.
That volume ranked Tennessee 18th overall on the Surescripts list, up from 29th last year. It also made Tennessee the 2nd most improved state in electronic prescribing in the nation just behind Vermont.
