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In keeping with a focus as a shared set of resources promoting use of Health Information Technology enabled Quality Improvement to support Safety Net Health Centers, the Alliance strategic plan identifies 4 Strategic Pillars:
• Hosted EHRS and support of its User Community
• Health Information Technology Innovation
• Research and Data Use
• Technical Assistance, Education and Consultation
Centrally Hosted Electronic Health Records System (EHRS)
More than 25 Community Health Centers (CHC) within the Alliance membership are currently live on a centrally hosted EHRS utilizing state of the art clinical decision support and performance measurement. The Alliance EHRS system is distinguished by the integration of evidence-based practice recommendations into the end-user interface to provide decision support at the point of care and to facilitate reporting against national performance measures. A detailed implementation methodology drives adoption of full functionality across all health center functions. A data warehouse developed through AHRQ funding provides for more robust data analysis and reporting against national performance measures at the provider, health center, and population levels. This unusually robust implementation reflects an underlying focus on the use of health information technology as a tool to improve quality and safety of care.
See EHRS User Community for more information on the Centrally hosted EHRS implementation sites.
Aspects of the Centrally hosted EHRS include:
Implementation Support
• Clinical leadership development and support
• Implementation strategy and tools
• Knowledge transfer to lower dependency on vendors
• Improved community health center relevance and competency
• Lower than vendor/market cost for professional services
• Opportunities for sharing among health centers
Procurement and Management of Licenses and Vendor Relations
• Alliance serves as central point for comprehensive set of EHR-related vendor services
• Vendor product selection/recommendation
• Vendor relations management
• Management of Licenses
• Upgrades and enhancements
Clinical Content Development
• Customization of software to optimize for CHC use
• Ability to support more robust clinical decision support
• Sharing of clinical expertise both internal and external
• Benchmarking of clinical standards
Reporting
• Dashboard format reporting
• Customized report assistance
Development & Management of Interfaces
• Construction of Interfaces
• Continuous monitoring and management of interfaces
Hosting
• Secure hosting in a Level 3 Facility
• Centralized architecture to increase privacy, security and redundancy
• Balance between cost and level of sophistication
HelpDesk
• Level II help desk support with appropriate escalation to vendors
• On-line ticketing system and tracking
• Proactive response to identified trends
Optimization of Use
• Higher Level of Expertise in all aspects of EHR
• Reporting − continuous monitoring and evaluation
• Identification of improvement strategies
• Ongoing training
• Enhancements
• Clinical Quality Improvement
Consideration of Technical Architecture
• Shared architecture to lower costs
• Redundant architecture and secure backup
• Ability to access system anywhere via Internet
• Interface engine to build and manage interfaces
• Ability to export information to a hosted data warehouse
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