Childhood Obesity Preventer

With nearly 100% of community health centers utilizing electronic health records (EHR) to care for patients, focus has pivoted from implementation and new workflow development to enhancement in order to drive value and reflect patient needs and population trends. EHR technology presents potential opportunities and significant constraints. Providers frequently document and share potentially sensitive information in the EHR, such as risk for intimate partner violence (IPV), consistent offers of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), or patient sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). Capturing such information can be immensely helpful in providing care tailored to individuals’ needs, but additionally challenges teams to develop workflows that keep the data private rather than risk harm to patients through improper or unintended disclosure.

Health centers are increasingly interested in embedding oral Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) programs into primary care, which calls for the embedding of PrEP care processes into electronic health record (EHR) systems. Health centers have had success with automation in HIV testing, and are looking to apply automated algorithms, order sets, and templates to the development of PrEP programs. This resource outlines EHR and health information technology (IT) configurations and tools that support PrEP care processes and provides examples of successful implementation from health centers and primary care settings.

This spreadsheet developed by the HITEQ Center provides a crosswalk of Clinical Quality Measures and their electronic specifications as defined in the 2023 update for Eligible Professionals (Clinicians). Fields include the crosswalk of measures with related information about CMS, NQF, and MIPS ID, and Telehealth Eligiblity, as well as inclusion in HRSA BPHC Uniform Data System (UDS) CY2023, Million Hearts, CMS Quality Payment Program (QPP) -  APM Performance Pathway (APP) Measures, Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP)/ CMS ACO Shared Savings Program, CMS Core Set (Child Core Set Medicaid / CHIP): HEDIS Specified, CMS Core Set (Adult  Core Set Medicaid): HEDIS Specified, Core Quality Measures Collaborative (ACO / Primary Care). Links are included throughout.

In recent years, health centers have become increasingly interested in and charged with not only addressing the health concerns of their patients, but centering and responding to patient’s social needs. According to Healthy People 2030, social needs, also known as the social determinants of health, are the conditions in the environments where people live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. Social needs encompass the quality of and access to resources such as housing, transportation, safety, employment, food, and more. Identifying and addressing unmet social needs as part of the clinical encounter provides the opportunity to deliver higher-quality, whole-person care, advance population health, and reduce healthcare costs.

In this video, viewers will learn how People, Process and Technology should factor into a health center's social needs screening workflow

These graphs and tables use health center reported UDS data from 2014 through 2020 to identify the EHRs most frequently used among health center programs, and show the change between years.

Now more than ever, health centers know that addressing social determinants of health is key to ensuring patients from underserved and disadvantaged groups receive quality, informed, and comprehensive care. This resource explores how health centers can effectively and safely collect critical patient information, including sensitive information like social need screening, through digital patient intake solutions that rely on paper-free, data-smart registration and EHR integration. Health centers can walk through why adding these solutions to their clinics can engage rather than alienate patients, and how to implement these technologies to screen for social risk and improve the patient experience.

The resource is available in the Documents to Download section below.

Drawing on recently published research from Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s EvidenceNOW initiative, Dr. Samuel Edwards shared insights for primary care practices seeking to assess and address provider burnout. Dr. Edwards highlighted associations between the use of quality improvement strategies, EHR capabilities, and satisfaction among practices with zero-burnout versus high-burnout. Key, and sometimes surprising, takeaways regarding leadership, workplace environment and culture, EHR use, and more from this research were discussed.

We can only End the HIV Epidemic if we work together, and that includes data sharing. Sharing important information, such as HIV test results, can help ensure optimal care for people at risk for or living with HIV coming to or from different health centers. Check out these strategies and tools to learn some tried and true strategies for data-sharing between health centers. 

The HITEQ Center led a learning collaborative for health centers on Addressing Provider Burden. This learning collaborative provided a space for discussion and sharing compassionate, well designed, and digital-first solutions. Health center participants had the opportunity to discuss interventions, implementation, training, and ongoing support for meaningfully integrated digital solutions to effectively support reducing provider burden.

This learning collaborative provided health centers a series of four structured virtual sessions to engage with subject matter experts and their colleagues in peer-to-peer learning and discussion. Topics included EHR best training practices, workflow support, and documentation support. Throughout the series, participants were encouraged to consider the broad scope of provider burnout and the opportunities their particular settings may have for meaningful interventions.

All sessions are scheduled to begin at 1:30 ET and will last between 60 - 90 minutes. The session schedule is:
--June 9: Session 1 - Scoping Provider Burnout as a Problem with a Solution
--June 23: Session 2 - EHR Training Best Practices
--July 14: Session 3 - Workflow and Documentation Support
--July 28: Session 4 - Provider Burnout Round-Up

Health centers interested in participating in the upcoming learning collaborative series can submit one registration form on behalf of their health center. Health center registrations can include up to three participants in their form.

Session 2 discussed the questions of effectiveness, timing, and structure of EHR training to prevent provider burnout.