HITEQ Resources & Events

• Click here to download the transcript of this October 4th HITEQ Highlights webinar and click here to listen to the archived recording. 
   
• Find the Essential Worksheet discussed here, within the Guide to Improving Care Processes and Outcomes in Health Centers.

Improving care delivery is a business and mission imperative for health centers, and the HITEQ Center offers a growing collection of tools and services to support this journey. The foundation for these particular offerings is the "Guide for Improving Care Processes and Outcomes in FQHCs."  This web-based resource provides step-by-step guidance on understanding and improving workflows and information flows that drive performance on key targets such as hypertension control and colorectal cancer screening. Guide centerpieces include worksheets for documenting, analyzing, sharing and improving care processes for such targets.

Strategies and tools in the Guide have been used successfully in various quality improvement (QI) initiatives, and a HITEQ Center focus is spreading this value more quickly and widely among health centers. This introductory training session introduces health centers and their partners to the Guide's proven approaches, worksheets and other health IT-enabled QI tools. Health Centers and their partners can incorporate these approaches into their existing QI activities, or use them as a foundation for putting a solid QI foundation in place. The session empowers attendees with critical 'what to know' and 'what to do' QI information, and concludes by recommending a 'quick-win' exercise wherein attendees use a worksheet in a brief exercise with their teams to document current care processes for a high priority target, and brainstorm potential improvements. Material in the Guide and in the training session provide further details about performing a more robust care process analysis, as well as on prioritizing, implementing, evaluating and sustaining improvements surfaced during the analysis phase.

The Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) will be hosting an informational webinar that features speakers from ONC and grantee communities providing an update on the Workforce Training Program for Health IT Professionals.

New health IT training programs are now available to help health care workers and others stay current in the changing health care environment and deliver care more effectively. These new sessions include online and face-to-face formats, and are customized to address specific health IT skills needed by physicians, nurses, care coordinators, health IT specialists and other healthcare workers.

At the end of the Workforce Training Program webinar, participants will be able to: 
• Understand the history and accomplishments of the Workforce Training Program 
• Identify how to access current and updated instructional materials to help healthcare workers excel in new environments 
• Recognize the value of the new components added to the Workforce Training Program 

The following resource provides links to organizations that include job postings for Health IT and Quality jobs. This may be helpful to those both seeking employment or simply looking to learn more about the field and the kinds of positions that are available. 

Oregon Health & Science University will be offering a free 18-hour online course to healthcare professionals interested in expanding their knowledge of healthcare analytics and health information technology. 

In the fifth session of the Weitzman Institute's Project ECHO Quality Improvement series, the presenters and participants reviewed and discussed ways to ensure that your cycles of change are specific, appropriate and well documented.

This free videoconferencing program assists QI professionals by providing instruction on practical tools and techniques. Common real world problems were addressed.