Content by Keyword: Health Information Infrastructure

This case study involved a series of preliminary phone conversations and subsequent on-site structured interviews with key stakeholders in the Oregon safety net.  We contacted consolidated health centers in and around Portland, identifying senior leadership and IS staff to query on administrative, management, clinical and technical issues related

OCHIN is a non-for-profit consortium of health centers and health safety net stakeholders created in 2000 following a state-sponsored study that recommended enhanced use of IS to improve the organization, coordination, financial stability and management of safety net health centers.  OCHIN is governed through its Board by the directors of partici

Site visits such as this one represent an important opportunity to guide HHS efforts to maximize benefits from use of IS in primary health care settings. Oregon presents a particularly interesting setting for our first site visit due to the State’s history of progressive thinking and organization around health care and public health issues.

The Oregon site visit involved telephone, email and in person exchanges with 30 respondents representing 18 institutions involved in the primary health care safety net in the State of Oregon.

NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC) is pleased to present this site visit report describing methods, key findings and conclusions from Oregon for “Community Health Center Information Systems Assessment: Issues and Opportunities.” This project is sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the U

Community Health Center Information Systems Assessment: Issues and Opportunities Findings from Oregon Site Visit Submitted to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and Health Resources and Services Administration, US DHHS NORC at the University of Chicago January 2004

HRSA, Budget Justification for the President’s 2004 Budget to Congress Recent summary on legislative activity http://www.nachc.org/ Starr P. Smart Technology, Stunted Policy: Developing Health Information Networks. Health Affairs, May/June 1997. DK Francies et al. Health Care Information Technology (New York: JC Bradford, 1999).

This document has presented findings from the first of three main project activities -- a comprehensive environmental scan including review of available printed materials and discussions with a limited group of thought leaders. Because of the unstructured nature of information in this area, we note that environmental scan findings are not intended

As described in this earlier, there exist a number of serious barriers to implementation and maintenance of advanced information management applications in CHCs as well as the difficulties in CHC relationships with vendors and in compliance with regulatory requirements on health data exchange mandated via HIPAA.

Environmental scan activities have revealed substantial activity in the implementation of health center information systems. Advances identified to date in locations such as Oregon, Miami-Dade County, Washington D.C. and other locations reflects both strong vision on the part of community leadership timely, well-focused support by key federal stak

Generally speaking, the needs of CHCs are quite similar to mainstream, private practices: both have significant practice management and record-keeping needs. As a result, the most prevalent applications in use at CHCs are practice management and EMR systems. As expected, we also discovered that CHCs have some unique characteristics that complicate

In recent years, the federal government have directed additional funding towards advancing CHC information management goals. In addition to programs focused exclusively on specific information management issues, CHCs have made use of more general grants to make important advances in IT. The main focus of these programs, described below, has been t

Like other members of the provider community, CHCs face opportunities and challenges related to their approach to accessing, producing, reporting and storing information. As core safety net providers, serving, according to the BPHC, approximately 11.3 million Americans in 2002 and as publicly sponsored centers with ties to the public health infras

On the vendor side, interviewees indicated that there are between 1,000-2,000 total practice management vendors on the market in the U.S. This estimate suggests substantial but unrefined demand and a maturing vendor landscape. Thought leaders also acknowledge that the market is consolidating and the total number of vendors will likely markedly dec

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems are multi-functional.  EMRs typically document patients’ past clinical history and family history; capture encounter information; create prescriptions and track current/past medications, allergies; act as a repository for laboratory and other diagnostic data and, in some cases, varying degrees of clinica

Practice management  systems generally deal with appointment scheduling, billing and accounting, enrollment and eligibility, coding and claims processing, patient demographics information management, master patient index, and, in some cases, recordkeeping functionality (i.e.: encounter documentation). According to industry sources the vast majori

Over the past several years information systems (IS) and health care experts alike have reflected on the relatively slow pace of adoption of information technology in the health care industry compared to many other industries.

This section presents high level trends in the use of information systems across the range of primary health care providers in the United States. This information was obtained from a review of recent publications in the area of health information technology as well as detailed conversations with thought leaders on the major systems related issues

The BPHC’s 2004 budget justification emphasizes the importance of HIS to overall health center effectiveness. In particular, the budget justification describes systems efforts related to the Bureau’s Health Disparities Collaboratives program and promotion of systems issues through the Integrated Services Delivery Initiative (ISDI). Information

Since the 1996 passage of the Health Care Consolidation Act, the C/MHC program has grown steadily  both in terms of provision of services to target populations and funding. For FY 2003, the program was funded at over $1.45 billion dollars. This funding includes all center grants included under Section 330: CHCs, MHCs, public housing clinics and H