Many regional extension centers are already discovering best practices to reach primary providers in their region and begin the job of digitizing their records to meet meaningful use guidelines.

For instance, three physicians in Newark, Del., who share office space, staff and supplies needed to ensure office productivity during implementation of their electronic health record system. The Delaware REC worked with the physicians to analyze vendors, steer practices through contract details and streamline common workflows into templates, said Mat Kendall, director of the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT's Office of Provider Adoption and Support. The center also identified practice inefficiencies, including those not EHR related.

"We need to replicate this across the country," he said during a Monday morning session at HIMSS11.

To help distribute the best practices, the Heath IT Research Center (HITRC) supplies links among the extension centers. The ONC also has a tool on its Web site that, with the entry of a zip code, connects the individual to the local extension center registration page, Kendall said.

The ONC's 62 extension centers offer a variety of services, including education, vendor selection and project management, to help health providers establish and become meaningful users of EHRs and redesign their workflow.

The extension centers have signed up 47,000 providers to date, Kendall said.

Joxel Garcia, who represents the extension center for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, offers 12 vendors. "We look to match the needs of a practice from what they have told us and pick vendors that would support them," he said.

Garcia said extension centers should differentiate their messages for executives, who focus on economics and finance, and physicians, who are focused on clinical care improvement, and have different center teams for the groups.