The Hawaii Medical Service Association paid a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm $45,000 during the first half of the year as it looked at ways to obtain stimulus plan funding for electronic health records.

Lobbying records at the Web site Opensecrets.org show HMSA hired the firm of Mcallister & Quinn LLC earlier this year. The firm was retained as Congress considered the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which includes $23 billion to help with the adoption of health information technology.

HMSA employed the services of Mcallister & Quinn Vice President Melissa Unemori Hampe, a former aide to Sen. Daniel Akaka and Rep. Patsy Mink, to set up meetings on Capitol Hill, and later, to follow program details, said HMSA Senior Vice President Cliff Cisco.

The stimulus plan includes Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act that provides the money for the computerization program, setting up financial incentives for physicians and hospitals that adopt and use health information technology by the year 2014.

"We want to make sure we get our fair share of funding in here to get up to speed on this technology," said Cisco. "It's good to remind them that we're here."

Cisco said people on various committees had been interested in HMSA's Online Care, the program that started earlier this year that allows consumers to connect with physicians over the Internet or telephone. The health insurer also briefed people on its $50 million effort to help hospitals and physicians install electronic medical records systems in the state.

Cisco said the lobbying effort did not involve talks on health care reform currently being discussed by Congress.

"We had a bit of an entree because of the interest in Online Care," said Cisco, noting Hampe helped identify who to speak with outside of the state's congressional delegation. "We used that to get in and talk with people."

Since that time Hampe, a former Maui resident, has helped keep HMSA abreast of developments with the stimulus plan's health information technology program and how grants might be awarded.

"It's the sort of thing you can't find on the shelf and you need somebody to ferret it out for you," Cisco said.

"We'd like to see if there's more money to come in and augment the investments we've already made."