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IP Pathways Announces Nationwide Practice to Assist Critical Access Hospitals
[January 15, 2013]

IP Pathways Announces Nationwide Practice to Assist Critical Access Hospitals


Des Moines, IA, Jan 15, 2013 (PRWeb.com via COMTEX) -- The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) establishes a goal for everyone in the U.S. to have an electronic health record (EHR) by 2014 and provides funding to accelerate this process. The ARRA authorizes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide a reimbursement incentive for physician and hospital providers who are successful in becoming "meaningful users" of an EHR. These incentives have hospitals, clinics and physicians racing to implement EHR and demonstrate meaningful use by 2014.



IP Pathways (http://www.ippathways.com), a Des Moines based Valued Added Reseller "VAR" of IT hardware, software and services today announces the launching of a nationwide practice that will provide IT strategies and solutions for aiding in the rollout and adoption of EMR/EHR to rural Critical Access Hospitals throughout the United States.

A Critical Access Hospital (CAH) is a hospital certified to receive cost-based reimbursement from Medicare. The reimbursement that CAHs receive is intended to improve their financial performance and thereby reduce hospital closures. CAHs provide 25 beds of inpatient care and are generally located in rural areas. As of 2012, there were 1330 CAHs in the United States.


IP Pathways assists Critical Access Hospitals, Clinics and Rural Hospitals to address specific healthcare IT related initiatives including EMR/EHR, Meaningful Use, HIPAA/HITECH and Business Continuity. The company helps customers with strategies and solutions to facilitate the implementation of EMR/EHR by providing a next generation IT infrastructure foundation on which the EMR/EHR resides, aid the adoption of EMR/EHR through the combination of virtual desktops and single sign-on, secure confidential patient information in accordance with HIPAA standards and establish and demonstrate attestation of a business continuity plan in accordance with HIPAA security Rule 164.308(a)(7)(i).

IP Pathways' solutions include IT hardware and software from leading technology providers such as Cisco, VMware, NetApp, Imprivata, Aruba and Sophos and are integrated into comprehensive turnkey strategies. The organization's experienced and accomplished engineers focus on the technology so their customers can focus on patient care.

Critical Access Hospitals, Clinics and Rural Hospitals work with IP Pathways for a few reasons according to Joe Shields, President of IP Pathways. "First, IP Pathways has a demonstrated history of success working with over 25 critical access hospitals and has tackled the same issues many times over. Second, rural critical access hospital IT staffs typically have had little exposure in next generation virtualized infrastructures. These projects are very important and the money being spent is in many cases the largest expense the facility has ever had so it makes sense to augment the existing staff with experienced experts who understand these technologies and also understand the needs of the organization as well. Third, IP Pathways offers comprehensive turnkey solutions that solve multiple issues. The company's competitors are normally point solution focused so they don't address all issues with a unified and integrated approach. Last but not least, IP Pathways' partners are all recognized leaders in their respective areas of technology and IP Pathways' awards and references also make them a leader in Critical Access Hospital IT. The combination makes IP Pathways the safe choice for these hugely important projects and customers can feel confident and secure that their initiatives will be addressed and they will be better prepared to receive the incentive dollars and avoid the penalties." Mike Struck, Vice President of Sales for IP Pathways adds, "IP Pathways has already helped over 25 Critical Access Hospitals throughout Iowa and Nebraska with their EMR/EHR rollout and aided in increasing the adoption so demonstrating meaningful use could occur and the CAHs received their incentives. That is a tremendous record of success so we are excited to bring these same strategies and solutions to CAHs throughout the rest of the remaining 48 states!" Wade Brower and Joe Shields further discuss how IP Pathways helps Critical Access Hospitals in an interview posted on the IP Pathways' website. For more information, please contact Wade Brower Co-Founder and Co-Owner, 816.423.8049, wbrower(at)ippathways(dot)com About IP Pathways IP Pathways, Leading the Data Center Revolution, provides solutions that reduce complexity within your IT infrastructures by reducing data center footprints, consolidating data storage and management, simplifying virtualization and optimizing application performance & security. The company's goal is to have happy customers, happy manufacturing partners and happy employees. IP Pathways' strategy is to customize internal and hybrid cloud solutions to allow customers to leverage their existing IT infrastructure investments while increasing utilization of human capital & equipment.

IP Pathways represents leading Tier 1 manufacturers of IT hardware and software such as VMware, NetApp and Cisco and focuses on FlexPod(TM) for VMware cloud infrastructures and is a leading expert in VMware server and desktop virtualization solutions.

For more information call 515.422.9300 or visit http://www.ippathways.com.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/1/prweb10307161.htm PRWeb.com

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