SOCMC To Receive Federal Funding to Move to Digital Patient Records

Manahawkin's Southern Ocean County Medical Center is getting a piece of a $40 million pie: a federal incentive program that's rewarding the state's first 70 hospitals to convert to digital medical records.

Patch partner New Jersey Spotlight reports that over the next 10 years, state officials estimate that 3,000 care providers would collectively receive up to $500 million in Medicaid incentive payments meant to offset the costs of updating computers and software to maintain electronic records. The $40 million payout is just the first influx of support. 

Digitization will make patients' prescriptions, lab tests, exams and surgical procedures accessible via the Internet all over the world.

But Colleen Woods, who heads the state Office of Health Information Technology, said the Medicaid incentive payments, authorized under the 2009 federal stimulus law, actually fall short of covering the full cost of the investment that hospitals, doctors, labs and pharmacies have made – and will continue to make – in electronic medical records.

Southern Ocean County Medical Center, part of New Jersey's Meridian Health Network, will receive $164,823 in federal Medicaid funding for the digitization process this week, according to the New Jersey Spotlight report.

Read the rest of the report here, and check back with Patch next week for more details on SOCMC's plans to transfer to electronic patient data.