Monday, November 5, 2007

Grants awarded to Minnesota health care providers

The Minnesota Department of Health’s Office of Rural Health and Primary Care today announced they have awarded grants totaling $3.5 million to help Minnesota providers develop electronic patient health records systems.

Minnesota law requires all Minnesota health care providers to use electronic patient health records by January 1, 2015. The Interconnected Electronic Health Record Grant Program is intended to help community collaboratives, community clinics, rural hospitals, small town physician clinics, nursing homes, and other small health care providers transition from paper records to electronic systems. These interoperable electronic health records will allow health care providers to exchange patient health information and deliver optimal care at all points of the health care system.

Learn more...

1 comment:

Fire Wings said...

Why is so much money being spent on *welfare fraud* while there are cuts to agencies that collect child support?

http://savechildsupport.org/

"Because the BI/data warehouse links data from a variety of disparate sources, including welfare eligibility system, medical eligibility, child support, wage and employer data, auto registrations and more, investigators are quickly able to build economic, demographic, and behavioral profiles to determine if further investigation is warranted.."

Hmm...who would fit the profile? ANYONE on public assistance! This article does not define *fraud*. I just want to say that public assistance programs are akin to the sharecropping system, they do not allow you to get beyond poverty and provide barely enough to survive. For example: There is an income limit to how much your vehicle can be worth while on public assistance. The MFIP grants are so low that no family could afford the cost of housing and living expenses even while receiving MFIP. Then again, most poor families cannot afford housing and there is a real crisis in which affordable, and income based housing is nonexistant compared to the need for it. Funding for daycare programs has been cut. Few daycare assistance programs exist, especially for working families. People do what they can to survive. The govt does not seem to care that they are creating such horrible living conditions that what they see as *fraud* is really doing what it takes to get by.

I do not condone falsely applying for benefits or taking more than what is owed--but I think people who scam the system are a minority. To really end *fraud* would be to overhaul the Social Services and Welfare System to provide realistic, meaningful ways to help people.