CORHIO Announces New CO-REC Program Leadership

Date: February 8th, 2012Category: CORHIO e-NewsletterTopics: Regional Extension Center

CORHIO Celebrates Achievements of CO-REC Under Robyn Leone’s Leadership and Hands Reigns Over to Kelly Higgins, New Program Director

The Colorado Regional Extension Center (CO-REC), an initiative of CORHIO and six statewide partner organizations, has accomplished much since the program’s launch in the summer of 2010, including:

  • Developed a service-delivery model that provides no-cost services to eligible providers (most other state and regional RECs charge fees to providers who enroll for help)

  • Enrolled 2,529 primary care providers for REC services (110% of goal!)

  • Helped 372 providers achieve stage 1 Meaningful Use (this number grows weekly)

  • Hosted more than 15 educational events across the state, and presented at dozens of other conferences and seminars, to help providers learn more about EHRs and Meaningful Use.

Robyn Leone, Director of CO-REC during this time, acquired a great depth of knowledge about electronic health record (EHR) systems and Meaningful Use, and in January announced that she would be taking that knowledge to a national level with one of the leading EHR vendors. 

CORHIO’s Executive director, Phyllis Albritton acknowledged Leone’s contributions by saying “Robyn‘s dedication to helping health care providers be successful in their adoption of health IT is unmatched by any of the other regional REC directors that I’m aware of. During her time with CORHIO, she was able to successfully guide the development of the CO-REC program, support our coalition of partner organizations doing boots-on-the-ground work and achieve nationwide recognition as one of the top three RECs in the country.”

To lead the program forward, into a new phase that will have intense focus on helping providers integrate EHRs into their clinical workflows, CORHIO has transitioned leadership to Kelly Higgins, who is the new CO-REC Program Director.

Ms. Higgins has been with CORHIO since April 2011 as the REC program coordinator. Prior to working with CORHIO, she was a project manager at HEALTHeLINK, a regional health information organization in western New York, where she had the responsibility of managing four programs funded by separate grants related to EHRs and HIE.

“I’m excited about the progress that the CO-REC initiative is making and I have no doubt that Kelly will continue to evolve the program in a way that best helps Colorado providers achieve Meaningful Use milestones, earn their incentive payments, and ultimately use technology to improve the quality of patient care,” said Albritton.