HITEQ Resources & Events

Each year, every community health center program is required to submit data for HRSA’s Uniform Data System (UDS). Technology can help in the process, but with several IT vendors promising fast and easy solutions, it can be an overwhelming decision as well as a frustrating process once we realize that there is no one-size-fits-all product. The tweaking of product and process has become one of trial-and-error for many programs.

This webinar will review UDS reporting software and showcase the experiences of two Health Care for the Homeless grantees. The presenters will describe the products they used, how they took EMR/EHR data and translated it into UDS reporting categories, and ultimately how reporting improved the quality of care for their consumers. Throughout the webinar, presenters will offer tips, suggestions, and other resources. After the presentation, speakers will participate in a live Q&A session with the audience.

Presenters:

• Susan Friedrich, MBA, PMP, Managing Director, JSI (Bow, NH)
• Chuck Amos, MBA, Director of Performance Improvement, Health Care for the Homeless (Baltimore, MD)
• Chris Espersen, MSPH, Independent Contractor, Past President of MWCN (Franklin Park, IL)

Bringing health IT to scale in ways that promote patient-centered care is a critical goal for the next stage of technology implementation in health settings. Clinical decision support (CDS) offers promising opportunities to integrate new evidence into electronic health records in hospital and clinics nationwide. Similarly, user-experience and user-centered design promote strategies to ensure health IT is useful and supports care, rather than creating technical roadblocks.

Payers are in a unique perspective to drive the use of evidence in practice. Whether through coverage decisions, utilization review, or coinsurance, there are many strategies payers use to reflect the value of specific therapies within the marketplace. So, what information do payers feel they need to guide these efforts? Raj Sabharwal, M.P.H., Director at AcademyHealth will discuss his article “Developing Evidence That Is Fit for Purpose: A Framework for Payer and Research Dialogue,” which describes efforts to develop and refine a decision-making framework that considers payers’ perspectives on the utility of evidence generated by different types of research methods, including real-world evidence. Panelists from the National Pharmaceutical Council and AcademyHealth’s Corporate Council and will provide insight into the decision-making framework and will provide perspectives from their own institutions. 

In October 2007, Dr. Berwick of the Institute for Health Improvement, based in Cambridge, charted a new course for providing healthcare in this country.  He proposed a conceptual framework that is designed to improve the patient’s care experience, while at the same time reduce the cost of care and attend to improved health of populations of people. Simply called the Triple Aim, it calls for a strategic focus on all three dimensions at once.  There has been no time previously that healthcare in the United States has been focused on all three domains at one time. A radical idea at first, the Triple Aim has now entered the mainstream and many healthcare organizations have adopted its tenets.

Organizations and communities that, in fact, attain the Triple Aim (or come close to it) have healthier populations to care for, have better coordinated care, and reduce the per capita cost of care.

Redwood Community Health Coalition is a network of 17 community health centers, with over 40 sites in Marin, Napa, Sonoma and Yolo Counties. Formed in 1994, our mission is to improve access to and the quality of care provided for under-served and uninsured people in our four counties. Our member health centers provide patient-centered primary care health homes to over 240,000 individuals in Marin, Napa, Sonoma and Yolo Counties. This represents more than 1 out of every 5 members of our communities.  Sixty percent of our patients have incomes below the Federal Poverty Level and close to thirty percent of our patients are uninsured.