Three Massachusetts Communities Chosen To Be Test Cases For Digital Health RecordsThree Massachusetts Communities Chosen To Be Test Cases For Digital Health Records

Three Massachusetts communities have been chosen as pilot sites for an electronic-health-record project that could serve as the model for statewide adoption of digitized medical-record systems.

The Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative--a nonprofit coalition launched last year by 34 health-care providers, health plans, and insurers in the state--picked the three communities from more than 35 that had applied to participate in the two- to three-year study. The project aims to examine the effectiveness and practicality of widely implementing electronic health records in community practice settings.

The three communities chosen are Brockton, a city in southeastern Massachusetts; Newburyport, a seaport district on the north shore of the state; and northern Berkshire, a region in western Massachusetts. The collaborative said in a statement that the three regions were chosen for "the diversity of their populations, geography, and IT maturity."

Within each community, health-care providers--including acute-care hospitals or group hospitals, physician practices, long-term care facilities, nursing and home health-care agencies, and community health centers--will implement interoperable E-health records systems.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, a member of the nonprofit collaborative, provided $50 million in seed funding for the demonstration phase of the project. However, the collaborative estimates that statewide adoption would cost about $1 billion.

Massachusetts is among several states that have regional E-health projects under way as part of a national push to reduce costs, medical mistakes, and improve patient quality of care through much wider-spread adoption of health-care IT. The Bush administration has a goal for most Americans to have electronic health records by 2014.