At the 2010 Government Health IT Conference and Exhibition held June 15-16 in Washington, DC, leaders from the brand new federal Regional Extension Center (REC) program showed their passion and determination for helping doctors achieve meaningful use.

There is some $44,000 in bonus money available to a physician who achieves meaningful use of electronic health records according to the requirements specified in the stimulus package, but relatively few primary care physicians are ready to start receiving that incentive, the leaders said.

At a June 15 plenary panel session, Jenni Brockman, director of Communications and Organizational Growth at the Virginia Health Quality Center (VHQC) said her organization has now partnered with the Center for Innovative Technology, Community Care Network of Virginia and the Medical Society of Virginia to form the new Virginia-wide REC.

According to Brockman, the Virginia Health Information Technology REC will use the two-year, $12.4 million federal REC grant to initially target some 2,300 primary care physicians in Virginia, including pediatricians and OB/GYNs. This represents about 20 percent of the primary care providers in Virginia, she said.

"Quality is the end game for us," Brockman said. "That's why we're interested in healthcare IT. It's a means for improving healthcare." Like many of the organizations that received REC grants, VHQC is a federally designated quality improvement organization (QIO), already experienced in helping organizations achieve quality in healthcare.

Brockman said the Virginia REC has already arranged for physicians to get a discounted group purchasing rate from selected healthcare IT vendors. However, the REC will help doctors achieve meaningful use, even if they do not wish to purchase from the discounted vendor list.

For a business model, Virginia's REC will charge physicians a "modest" fee for participation, to be reimbursed when the doctors achieve meaningful use. "This is more of a psychological hook to get them to participate," Brockman said.

David Groves, executive director of the Healthbridge Tri-State Regional Extension Center said the new REC will be one of the few to serve more than one state. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, it will also serve physicians in parts of Kentucky and Indiana.

Since 1997, the Healthbridge health information exchange has helped more than 28 hospitals, 5500 physician users, 17 local health departments, 700 physician offices and clinics, as well as nursing homes, independent labs, radiology centers and others in the healthcare community achieve connectivity, Groves said.

The REC will serve a provider area covering 3 million patients, targeting some 7,000 primary care physicians initially, with a goal of helping 1800 doctors achieve meaningful use of healthcare IT by 2012 in order to qualify for federal incentives.

Groves said the REC has its work cut out for it. "Dismal statistics" show fewer than 6 percent of primary care physicians in the area use electronic health records, with even fewer in rural areas.

The Healthbridge REC will offer group purchasing solutions, onine and print resources, in-person meetings conferences and webinars and special interest intensive sessions and collaboratives, Groves said.

Group purchased EHR options will be offered at a "steeply discounted rate," he said.

The Tri-State REC will also provide connectivity for health information exchange (HIE), he said.

Groves said the Tri-State REC will provide early adopters free participation in the REC if they join within the next 30 days. After that, there will be fees, though he did not say how much.

Ultimately, Groves said he hopes the REC will become a Beacon Community, one that is a leader in healthcare IT advancement. "We don't want this to be just proof of a pilot, but a true transformational change, " he added.

Beth Schindele, project director of new Delaware Regional Extension Center, affiliated with the West Virginia Medical Institute and Quality Insights of Delaware, said the REC will try to target the more than 1300 primary care doctors in Delaware, with a goal of reaching 1,000.

This is a "very aggressive" goal, she said, because most of the physicians serve rural areas and are without broadband service.

The Delaware REC will also help with group purchasing discounts and will use 90 percent of its grant money to provide incentives to get physicians to participate.

Getting a physician buy-in to healthcare IT is difficult, Schindele said. Doctors don't want anything to intrude on the time they have to spend with patients. So far, the new REC has more than 150 physicians who have signed contracts in advance to participate.

The rewards make all the effort to persuade doctors worth it, Schindele said. "If doctors don't know how many diabetics they are treating, then they also don't know how many they aren't treating."

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, RECs nationwide have been opening beginning in May, and are expected to support some 100,000 primary care providers and hospitals within the first two years. This year, the federal government provided $642 million in grants in two phases to 60 organizations nationwide that will become RECs. The grants come from $2 billion allotted for healthcare IT under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.