About
This blog is a collaboration between the WI Office of Rural Health and the Rural WI Health Cooperative (RWHC), with much of the content produced by Louis Wenzlow.
Louis is RWHC’s Director of Health Information Technology and the Chief Information Officer of the RWHC Information Technology Network. Before taking his position at RWHC, Louis was the Director of Information Technology at Reedsburg Area Medical Center, where he led a variety of EMR system implementations and chaired the HIPAA Security Taskforce.
He has served on the Wisconsin Doctors Office Quality—Information Technology (DOQ-IT) Advisory Board, the Wisconsin e-Health Initiative Information Exchange Workgroup, and is co-Chair of the Rural Health Resource Center’s Rural Underserved HIT Coalition, as well as a member of the Flex Monitoring Team Expert Workgroup. He frequently presents on issues relating to HIT implementation and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and works closely with the National Rural Health Association, the Rural HIT Coalition, and other organizations to advocate for rural provider HIT needs.
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Louis – I follow you on Twitter. I work with http://www.broadbandforamerica.com, BfA is a large group of organizations with the mission to offer high speed internet access to every business and individual in America. I am specifically helping to educate and share the many benefits of hi-speed internet access to the health and medical industry and for patients.
I asked a question on @theearlyshow yesterday morning about these issues during the ask @drjashton segment. I wanted to connect to see if you’d be interested in having a guest blog post on our site and also posted on your’s specifically about the health benefits of broadband access for rural and underserved areas.
I can be reached at cstineman@broadbandforamerica.com or on Twitter @cstineman.
Thanks!
Chris
As a tobacco coalition coordinator of a rural I must say that I believe that the Smoke-Free Wisconsin Law that will take effect on July 5, 2010 will do great things for rural health. Smoking is the single most preventable cause of death and disease in this country, this state, and in each of our counties. This law will do much for changing our social norm and therefore our health. It may be the best thing that has ever happened to rural health!
Hi Louis,
I’m partners in a site dedicated to educating health care providers on the impact of the HITECH Act on ehr adoption and implementation. I’d like permission to re-post your latest post — Supplemental “Rural Hospital” REC Funding May Not Reach Most Rural Hospitals — on our HITECH Updates blog. As with any guest post, we duly note authorship, source, etc. Please let me know. I can be reached at: carol@hitechanswers.com
Thanks much!
The major workforce problem facing rural locations is policy. Rural locations are primary care dependent for workforce and also depend upon health care spending in rural locations as well as health care spending in underserved locations – simple common sense. The United States policy designs insure that primary care revenues are not enough to keep up with the rising cost of delivering primary care. Only 5 percentage points of annual health spending go to primary care spending. Less than 5 percentage points each go to rural areas with 20% of the population (9% of workforce) and to underserved areas with 21% of the population in rural or urban areas with 7% of the workforce.
I would like to share your most recent post about EHR incentives with our Kansas HIT hospital contacts. I would give credit to your authorship and source. Please let me know.
Thanks
Mary
Dear Louis,
I am a Community Manager for the HIT Community, a new online presence for small and medium-sized healthcare organizations to learn about Meaningful Use of EHRs.
We have become aware of your site, and are grateful for all of the resources you have posted. We are also looking for guest bloggers, and wonder if you would consider checking out our site and contributing/cross linking, etc.
Warm regards on a wintry day in Boston,
Laura Smith
Dear Louis,
Our website is http://www.thehitcommunity.org.
Best,
Laura