A draft strategic plan for fostering electronic health record adoption among providers tending to underserved populations proposes a program under which vendors would offer reduced health information technology product prices in exchange for federal assistance in identifying eligible medically underserved area providers.

The draft plan, released Aug. 24 by the Health IT Disparities Workshop within the Health and Human Services Department, would work in tandem with an office of the national coordinator for health information technology strategic plan released for public comment earlier this year.

The workshop's plan floats the idea of a "Public-Private Digital Parity Partnership." Participating health IT vendors would pledge to work with a specific number of providers within officially-defined medically underserved areas and offer discounted product and service purchasing rates in exchange for access to data identifying eligible providers.  

The draft plan also proposed that HHS grant programs focused on the provision of EHRs "work toward optimizing" providers in medically underserved areas.

HHS would continue to work with the Agriculture Department to ensure that rural healthcare providers can use USDA grants and loans to buy health IT, the draft plan adds. HHS and USDA announced on Aug. 16 a memorandum of understanding linking rural hospitals and clinicians to federal capital loan programs for the purchase of health IT software and hardware.  

For more:
- go to the working group draft plan

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