TAMPA, FL – Sage North America today announced that the Sage Healthcare Division, a major provider of electronic health records (EHR) and practice management software serving approximately 80,000 physicians throughout the United States, has been named a preferred vendor by the Ohio Health Information Partnership to make available the Sage Intergy Meaningful Use Edition to all of the Regional Extension Center's (REC) thousands of participating healthcare providers.

The Ohio Health Information Partnership (OHIP) is a nonprofit, funded through a combination of state funds and federal grants, whose mission is to advance the adoption, implementation and meaningful use of health IT among health care providers to improve the safety, quality, accessibility, availability and efficiency of healthcare for the citizens of Ohio. The organization was created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Fred Richards, CIO and COO of OHIP, said, "We look forward to working with Sage Healthcare to help us achieve our mission to improve the quality and value of health in Ohio by increasing the use of EHRs."

The Ohio partnership will provide services that will offer practices EHR implementation assistance making the selection of an EHR system easier for healthcare providers, as well as helping providers meet meaningful use standards. Meeting these standards is necessary for physicians to qualify for financial incentives through Medicare and Medicaid.

The overall goal of OHIP is to improve healthcare quality, outcomes and experience for the citizens of Ohio. OHIP is committed to assisting more than 6,000 physicians adopt and meaningfully use an EHR by 2012.

As a Preferred Vendor for OHIP, Sage will be offering its electronic health record products and services to OHIP provider members. "The Sage mission echoes that of the Ohio Information Partnership in that our ultimate goal is to improve healthcare outcomes throughout the United States through the implementation of affordable and effective health information technology," said Ken Ernsting, Vice President of Business Development for Sage Healthcare. "Because of this mission, Sage is dedicated to serving regional extension centers and the provider community here in Ohio and beyond."

The Sage Intergy Meaningful Use Edition is a comprehensive clinical, financial and administrative health information technology solution that assists physicians in continuing to advance the quality and efficiency of care they deliver. The Sage Intergy family of products includes integrated practice management, electronic health records, clinical and business intelligence and tools for online patient engagement. Providers can access Sage Intergy from multiple practice locations, from home, or other remote locations either through a central patient database server, or as a Sage-hosted solution on a monthly subscription basis.

Sage Intergy easily tracks the details of a patient's clinical history, shares and manages clinical information and combines complex medical practice functions into easy-to-navigate menus. Sage Intergy features centralized financial operations including billing, reporting, task management, and fully integrates with EDI services, Sage Intergy Practice Portal, Sage Intergy RIS and Sage Practice Analytics.

Clinics eligible to utilize Ohio Health Information Partnership's subsidized services include Priority Primary Care Providers (PPCP) in the area of family medicine, obstetrics, and gynecology, general internal or pediatric medicine. In addition, practices must be either individual or a small group practices (defined as 10 or fewer professionals with prescriptive privileges in the practice) primarily focused on primary care; public and critical access hospitals; and community health centers and rural health clinics.