HITEQ Resources & Events

The Streamlining IT Infrastructure for a Successful Telehealth Program learning collaborative series focused on best practices, common solutions, key considerations, and other strategies for success when implementing telehealth technologies in a health center. 

Health centers participated in four structured virtual sessions where they engaged with subject matter expert, Rachel Dixon, President and Executive Director of Prime Health, and in didactic learning and peer sharing and discussion. Session topics included: assessing technology and identifying best practices for streamlining telehealth workflows, aligning telehealth technology with financial sustainability, telehealth technology vendor considerations, and operationalizing telehealth technology strategies.

With the onset of the COVID-19 State of Emergency, in March 2020, Community Care Cooperative (C3) and the Mass League of Community Health Centers (League) both identified the critical need to support health centers to pivot to telehealth and COVID-19 care, in order to continue to meet the needs of the low income, diverse communities they serve and to remain in sound financial position. A grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation provided the opportunity to form the MA FQHC Telehealth Consortium, providing support to FQHCs across Massachusetts. With the involvement of the CEOs and CMOs of the Consortium health centers, the League and C3 have designed a “Maturity Model” that provides a holistic roadmap for building a telehealth platform that is fully integrated into the primary care team, enhancing providers’ ability to address the physical, behavioral, and social needs of the complex, diverse patients served.

This webinar gave participants the opportunity to learn about the successes and ongoing work to advance telehealth in Massachusetts and critical areas for continued focus and resources to enable equitable access to telehealth.

Primary care plays a key role in ending the HIV epidemic. The Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative launched across HHS in 2019, setting forth four key strategies also called the “four pillars” of ending the HIV epidemic. Primary care in federally qualified health centers figures centrally into these efforts, evidenced by the addition of several HIV screening and prevention measures and metrics in the Uniform Data System (UDS) reporting. This webinar reviewed the outcomes of the first year of HIV Screening and Prevention reporting on the UDS, highlight opportunities for quality improvement, and discussed funding opportunities.

With the highly mobile modern workforce and travel resuming for the general public, it can become increasingly complicated for health centers to ensure proper reporting of relevant cases to all jurisdictions having oversight on either our operational area or the patient’s residence. To address these concerns, reduce public health reporting burden, and ensure comprehensive reporting for optimal public health management, the CDC electronic case reporting effort had created the eCR Now tool and the MedMORPH FHIR app. As of October 1, 2021, more than 9,400 facilities are actively sending COVID-19 electronic initial case reports to public health using eCR Now and related tools. On the basis of eCR Now, CDC is further developing the MedMORPH (Making EHR Data More Available for Research and Public Health) project to also incorporate additional public health and research support. This webinar introduced health centers to both projects, and showed the roadmap toward automated public health reporting without human intervention.

This two session roundtable series brought together CIOs, CISOs, and other IT leadership from health centers to discuss strategic investments in cybersecurity, including those that can leverage recent ARP funding but sustain beyond the coming years. Participants had the opportunity to connect with each other and subject matter experts about implementation, considerations, and the future of cybersecurity and data protection in health centers.