The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston recently announced that it will receive $15.3 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to establish a Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center.

The Gulf Coast REC will serve as a place where healthcare practitioners can reach out for help with technical assistance, guidance and information on best practices. RECs are typically designed to address unique community requirements, as well as support and accelerate efforts by healthcare providers to become meaningful users of electronic health records.

The ARRA investment, which is one of 28 being awarded to organizations for a total of more than $267 million, will help the emerging health information technology industry to grow. The industry itself is expected to create and support tens of thousands of jobs ranging in everything from nurses to technicians to trainers.

"Our school has been a leader in interdisciplinary innovation in clinical and public health informatics, and now we will lead in the ambitious national goal of implementation of an electronic health record for every citizen," Jack Smith, M.D., Ph.D., dean of The University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston, said.

"The RECs are a touchstone for achieving this goal and are the HIT equivalent of agricultural extension services," he continued. "They will train and field the army of HIT implementation agents which will sweep through primary practice settings in Texas to bring the best HIT technology to bear. They will do this based on the best evaluation and testing environments for HIT products that is available. Our testing and evaluation center will draw heavily on our outstanding faculty in clinical and public health informatics."

The Gulf Coast REC at UTHealth is accompanied by three other regional extension centers at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, Texas A&M University and the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council Education and Research Foundation. These RECs received a total of $35.7 million in funding and are working together to coordinate their efforts.

"It is particularly gratifying to me to also see how our REC grant team was so instrumental in organizing all of Texas through multiple tightly integrated RECs that blanket the entire state," Smith said. "Our leadership in the Gulf Coast REC and all the proposed Texas RECs is just another example of how UTHealth is the best hope for a healthier future."

The RECs will offer on-site technical assistance to primary care physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, as well as support physicians with everything from vendor selection and group purchasing to implementation, project management and best practices in privacy and security.

"One of the most important benefits is that the RECs will help restore integrity to the doctor-patient relationship by giving physicians access to the right data at the right time," Kim Dunn, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the Gulf Coast REC, said. "RECs will help physicians take patient data and translate that into information that's actionable. Having the resources to provide patients with the best possible care will foster trust in the physician."