Commissioner of Social Security Michael Astrue announced yesterday that the Social Security Administration has awarded over 17 million dollars (funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) in contracts to 15 health care providers and networks to provide electronic medical records to SSA during the disability review process:
“Using health information technology will improve our disability programs and provide better service to the public,” Commissioner Astrue said. “We’ve seen a significant increase in disability applications. To process them, the agency sends more than 15 million requests annually for medical records to healthcare providers. This largely paper-bound workload is generally the most time-consuming part of the disability decision process. The use of health IT will dramatically improve the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of this process, reducing the cost of making a disability decision for both the medical community and the American taxpayer.”
