Advancing health information technology in
Minnesota and North Dakota.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is REACH?

REACH—the Regional Extension Assistance Center for HIT—is a nonprofit federal Health Information Technology (HIT) Regional Extension Center dedicated to helping providers in clinics, small hospitals, and other settings in Minnesota and North Dakota improve care by implementing and using electronic health record (EHR) systems. REACH is one of 60 regional HIT extension centers, which were established by the federal government early in 2010.

Who operates the REACH program?

REACH is a program of Key Health Alliance, a partnership of Stratis Health, National Rural Health Resource Center, and The College of St. Scholastica, which collaborates with North Dakota Health Care Review and the University of North Dakota, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Center for Rural Health.

These five organizations have a long history of working to improve health care and have a wealth of experience in health care quality, education, patient safety initiatives, and HIT. We have worked extensively with providers in Minnesota and North Dakota. Collectively, the REACH partners have served thousands of providers and organizations in HIT over the past five years. Stratis Health has successfully assisted more than 100 Minnesota adult primary care clinics and hospitals through its EHR adoption and implementation services and support, and achieved an overall participant satisfaction rate of 93.5% for its EHR work under its Medicare Quality Improvement Organization contract.

What services does REACH offer?

REACH services are designed to take your organization from its current state—whether you have no EHR or only need to optimize your current system—to stage 1 meaningful use in 12 months or less. Services include:

  • Readiness assessments—determining where your organization is on the continuum of readiness to adopt an EHR and providing a plan to prepare your organization for the EHR adoption process
  • Practice and workflow redesign—planning and preparing for the cultural changes, as well as clinical, and business benefits of EHR
  • Assisting you in selecting a certified EHR product that offers the best value for your needs—taking you from developing your system requirements/needs to identifying the right vendor for you
  • Vendor contracting—providing sample contracts and opportunities to connect with preferred vendors for an accelerated contracting process
  • Process for EHR project management—offering a process to work with your selected vendor to ensure effective implementation of a certified EHR product
  • EHR optimization and meaningful use—leveraging an EHR's potential to support your goals to improve quality and value of care, by enhancing clinical and administrative workflows, process improvement, template building, and clinical decision support
  • Technical reporting—such as Crystal Report writing, SQL programming, or other technical services that supply data to support meaningful use and quality data submission to CMS
  • Privacy and security best practices—providing training on how to comply with legal requirements to protect patient health information, including breach notification, risk mitigation, policy and procedure templates, and business associate management
  • Functional interoperability and HIE assessment and guidance—from the basics of e-prescribing to preparing your organization to participate in health information exchange with other providers and with other entities (i.e. immunization registry and public health) and for quality reporting

REACH support does not include funds for hardware or software for any provider.

How does REACH provide services?

REACH uses a process consultation approach, focused on providing you with the skills and tools needed to make changes. We teach you how to make HIT decisions, empowering you to make changes in an informed and sustainable way. Processes and technologies are constantly changing and you will continue to need these skills in the future.

REACH believes the key to improving quality and patient safety, and to achieving a positive ROI on an EHR investment, comes when organizations have the right leadership, culture, process, and workflow in place. REACH works with providers to make sure these organizational factors align for HIT success.

REACH technical assistance is a mix of individualized on-site assistance with direct hands-on support, consultations, and group learning collaboratives. Educational resources include toolkits, educational Webinars, and Web links to best practices collected from the federal Office of the National Coordinator (ONC).

Who can use REACH services?

REACH services are available to Minnesota and North Dakota providers of all types and sizes across the continuum of care. Whether you have:

  • No EHR
  • An installed EHR that is difficult or impossible to use
  • A working EHR that needs to be optimized to fully benefit you and meet federal meaningful use requirements

Who is eligible for the big discounts?

Eligible providers must meet the following criteria.

  • Physicians and health care professionals with prescriptive privileges
    • Physicians assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse midwives
  • Primarily focused on primary care
    • Family medicine, internal medicine, Ob/Gyn, pediatrics
  • Small practices of ten or fewer professionals

What if my clinic has a mix of primary care providers and specialists?

In most cases, significant discounts will be available to you too. The clinic needs a critical mass of primary care providers.

How is REACH funded?

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) created the EHR subsidy for technical assistance as an incentive with the belief that if all providers use electronic health records effectively, the safety, quality, and efficiency of care will improve, in turn reducing overall health care costs.

Half of REACH funding comes through the ONC, Department of Health and Human Services, through ARRA. The other half comes from participation fees and other grant funding. ONC will release funding to KHA incrementally as participating primary care providers reach the following milestones toward meaningful use.

  • Provider agreement between a health care practice and a regional extension center is signed.
  • A practice and its associated providers are actively utilizing e-prescribing and quality reporting measures, such as disease registries.
  • A practice and its associated providers have met meaningful use, based on the CMS standard. The meaningful use definition is currently being promulgated.

What are REACH’s goals?

REACH aims to provide technical assistance services and support to 5,100 priority primary care physicians and other clinicians in Minnesota and North Dakota over the next four years. REACH is committed to helping more than 350 clinics reach meaningful use of EHR systems by 2012.

Which EHR systems will REACH support?

REACH will only work with nationally certified EHR vendor products. At this point REACH works with many different vendors. As this program evolves, REACH may focus on a select group of preferred EHR vendors / products for group purchasing and implementation cost-saving efficiencies.

Why should I choose REACH over any other consultant?

The organizations that make up REACH have a long term focus on improving the quality and safety of patient care using technology tools. We offer you:

  • Proven track records of helping providers improve health care quality, patient safety, and cost reduction
  • Proven HIT expertise in delivering cost-effective services
  • Close coordination with the state health information exchange programs, e-health initiatives, workforce training programs, other regional extension centers, and with other recovery act funded initiatives in Minnesota and North Dakota.

We have extensive experience helping small practices and working with rural providers. Many of the larger consulting services with comparable experience have focused on large hospitals.

We don’t get paid by the federal government unless you achieve meaningful use.