WASHINGTON – The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, through its regional extension centers, has started recruiting “physician champions” who are well on their way to becoming meaningful users of electronic health records to help others in their area get over the hurdles of digitizing their medical records.

Meaningful Use Vanguard (MUV) participants work with their area extension center to assist providers who are struggling to deploy EHRs and become meaningful users, so they can qualify for incentive payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

[See also: Regional extension centers offer best practices from the trenches.]

John O’Neill, MD,  of Middletown, Del. for example, moved all his new and existing patients to electronic records more thanthree years. He participates through the Delaware regional extension center, Quality Insights of Delaware, a quality improvement organization that has worked with CMS for over 10 years, according to a report ONC published March 4 on its website.

O’Neill is one of 221 MUV participants in Delaware, and the extension center plans to recruit about 80 more, ONC said.

The extension center features its vanguard physicians in its electronic newsletters, videos on its Web site and involves them in conferences with other healthcare providers, according to the report.

As part of the ONC program, the 62 extension centers across the nation offer local technical assistance and services, including education, project management and vendor selection to establish the software and redesign practice workflow.

[See also: $80M more for RECs, HIEs and workforce programs.]

The Delaware extension center also uses webcasts to demonstrate for physicians how to use health IT, and develops communication materials in English and Spanish for them to use in educating their patients on EHRs’ healthcare benefits.

Among the challenges that O’Neill can identify with as physicians establish EHRs is entering data for existing patients. It’s a time-consuming process that cannot be easily delegated to someone else. At his office, O’Neill’s medical assistant enters some of the prescription drug and allergy lists, but he does the clinical notes because “no one thinks like you,” he said.

The extension center does not recommend EHR vendors, but is helpful with reviewing vendor contracts and pointing out potentially unnecessary components to reduce upfront costs of implementation.

The extension center is “accessible” and they have “a distinct interest in my success,” O’Neill said.

A software upgrade to his system will steer O’Neill toward qualifying for the $18,000 Medicare incentive payment by the second half of this year. He said he expect to recover his $40,000 implementation costs within five years. His annual software and hardware costs for his combined EHR and practice management system run about $5,000 annually.

But O’Neill said he’s getting back more in reimbursements because the EHR system enables better documentation to support coding patient bills.

Using an EHR is helping him provide higher quality care to his patients, “and that’s what’s important,” he said.