This interactive session with Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Training and Technical Assistance Center!  experts introduced the TA Center and its resources, provided  an overview on how to get connected to your state PDMP, and discussed PMDP and EHR integration. Experts were available to answer participant questions and there was an opportunity to request additional PDMP assistance for health centers.

This webinar series will highlight the intersection between health information technology and behavioral health services and considerations. In the first webinar, a joint collaboration between the HITEQ Center and the National Council for Behavioral Health, we introduced the series and the planned topic areas to be covered as well as explore other suggested topics from the participants. 

This webinar focused on a very popular area in which telehealth can help deliver services: Mental/Behavioral Health. Telehealth has been shown to be an effective way in providing mental and behavioral health services and is one of the specialties many public and private payers will reimburse for if technology is utilized. This webinar explained how to integrate telemental/behavioral health into your organization. Get tips and hear stories from clinics who have successfully done so to help you establish your own program.

The HITEQ Center conducted a webinar on building and sustaining a data driven culture for Community Health Care Association of New York State. Too often, analytic initiatives and data capacity building are based on the heroics of a few individuals. In times of high turnover and changing priorities, how can we make data driven decision-making part of a health center’s culture? This webinar introduced concepts, tools and examples to help manage data as a strategic asset, align data strategy with organizational strategy, and explored ways to implement a data services function. Even small agencies with scarce resources can develop the skillset, mindset, and toolset to embed and sustain a data driven culture. 

There is increased interest in how telehealth can be used to address substance use disorders (SUD) as well as funding by governmental agencies to provide such services. However, what type of SUD services can a community health center offer via telehealth? This webinar discussed potential ways in which clinics can integrate these services into their organization and the potential issues they may encounter.

This webinar shared evidence-based models that provide a framework for health centers to optimize the team in primary care. Experts described how utilization of extended team members and technology can reduce gaps in care for prediabetics and diabetics. With a focus on lifestyle and community based projects, this webinar highlighted the strategies and resources to improve the health and behaviors of patients at risk for diabetes and manage uncontrolled diabetes. Through early detection and providing diabetes management through a team-based care, health centers can help patients’ live long, healthy lives.

Community health centers are participating in a healthcare marketplace that is gradually moving from volume to value. Because of health centers’ financial and infrastructure limitations, it may not be prudent for them to engage in full risk contracts at this point. This webinar described the continuum of value-based contracting, and suggested steps for health centers to move up the continuum. It also outlined basic elements of infrastructure to perform well in a value-based environment. Presenters from Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic presented their experience.  

This webinar focused on how to improve child weight screening, nutrition and physical activity counselling, and design appropriate and meaningful interventions according to health center peers. Discussion and demonstrations of how you may be able to optimize your EHR to encourage accurate and complete collection of required data, and identify children who may need intervention also took place.  A number of tools that support this quality improvement around addressing child weight and potential for obesity were discussed, including Bright Futures guidance and data validation tools from HITEQ.

Building on the HITEQ Center’s previous webinars that introduced an Analytic Capability Assessment, building a roadmap for action and using data governance to maximize the value of data, the third webinar in this series explored how to grow and sustain these efforts. Too often, analytic initiatives and data capacity building are based on the heroics of a few individuals. In times of high turnover and changing priorities, how can we make data driven decision-making part of a health center’s culture? This webinar introduced the Data Strategy Worksheet, a tool developed by the Center for Care Innovation to help align data strategy with organizational strategy, as well as explored ways to implement a Data Services function. Even small agencies with scarce resources can develop the skillset, mindset, and toolset to embed and sustain a data driven culture.

The Health Information Technology, Evaluation, and Quality Center (HITEQ) hosted this webinar on promising and innovative practices for the use of health information technologies (IT) to enhance opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment. The discussion focused on how various health information technology practices and tools, including electronic health records and prescription drug monitoring programs, can be used to enhance OUD services and specifically medication assisted treatment (MAT). The webinar also featured the experiences and practices of health centers which are currently using health IT to enhance OUD services..

As health centers become increasingly more digitized, there is often a feeling of being data rich but information poor. How can healthcare organizations maximize the value of data and build a data-driven culture? The answer lies in data governance. When managed like any other strategic asset – human resources, capital, facilities, or brand – data becomes a differentiator in the pursuit of high value, cost effective health care. In this webinar, the HITEQ Center presented the essentials of good data management processes and introduce the Center for Care Innovation’s Data Governance Handbook, offering ideas for action and tools to improve data quality, increase data literacy, and maximize access to data.

As healthcare becomes more data driven, health centers are aware that they need to build their “organizational muscle” for data analytics, but often may not know where to start. In this webinar the HITEQ Center introduced the Analytics Capability Assessment (ACA), a tool developed by the Center for Care Innovations that allows users to look critically at an organization’s analytics capability across three key domains: people, process, and technology. By determining their level of capability in each of these factors, organizations can develop an individualized roadmap to focus and prioritize capability-building efforts. The tool also helps to demystify some of the jargon that can often alienate non-technical staff. Methods, examples, and tips for deploying the ACA in health center organizations were also shared.

During this e-learning webinar from the Center for Care Innoviations (CCI) learn:
1. How to incorporate remote monitoring into your chronic disease case management efforts.
2. How to effectively engage and activate patients in the achievement of case management goals.
3. How to use community health workers and others to identify and manage high risk chronically ill patients.

In this webinar, the HITEQ Center provided a broad overview of NCQA's Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) recognition for 2017, including overall structure, timing, and evidence options that are new to 2017. The new standards focus on continuous practice transformation, flexibility including a new virtual review process, comprehensive integrated care, and increased alignment with existing initiatives. We reviewed what this means for health centers, what is required, and identified tools or processes that health centers can use to support PCMH recognition.

AMA's Steps Forward Module discussed the adoption and implementation of telemedicine and telehealth, as well as telemedicine's opportunity to support patient and care team coordination and communication through remote patient monitoring.

These webinars assisted health centers with understanding coding in the context of risk adjustment and value-based payment and care.

Many health centers provide behavioral health services; others work closely with community partners who provide behavioral health services to their patients. One of the biggest challenges for health centers is determining how to integrate data between the two services. The HITEQ Center recently published the resource Utilizing and Integrating Behavioral Health Data into a Health Center’s Primary Care Services. This webinar introduced the Center for Integrated Health Solutions' Standard Framework for Levels of Integrated Healthcare and provided some guidance of how to integrate care regardless of which model of care is being provided. Dr. Rina Ramirez, Chief Medical Officer of Zufall Health, shared her experiences of integrating behavioral health data. Zufall Health which has a traditional Behavioral Health Department, recently started an Integrated Behavioral Health program within primary care, and partners with an external behavioral health organization who focuses on people with Serious Mental Illness.

The HITEQ Center hosted a webinar to learn about the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)’s revised Substance Abuse Confidentiality Regulations for Health Information Exchange Final Rule (referred to as 42 CFR Part 2) and how it may affect your health center. The webinar included information from the Final Rule published on January 3, 2018. Reece Hirsch of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP provided an overview of the critical changes affecting health centers, including common definitions, and how the changes may affect integrated medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) programs. 

Interested in collecting standardized data on the social determinants of health using PRAPARE but not sure how to incorporate it into your organization’s workflow?  This webinar walked through different strategies and models to collect PRAPARE data, ranging from utilization of clinical staff or non-clinical staff to self-assessment methods to integration with other teams or programs.

The best dashboards give health centers actionable information at their fingertips, and use great design practices to focus a user’s attention on the most important information on the page. The HITEQ Center presented tips on how to develop effective data dashboards including designers and users, common pitfalls in dashboard design and how to avoid them, and dashboard software for consideration. The Indiana Quality Improvement Network (a health center controlled network housed within the state’s Primary Care Association) shared their experience in developing custom data dashboards for health centers in Indiana and beyond. Kislaya Kunjan, PhD (Health IT Director at IQIN) demonstrated multiple dashboards developed by their organization, and how much of it is publicly available on their website (www.indianapca.org/dashboard) for the benefit of health centers and affiliated organizations across the US.