• National Health IT Week – This week, June 14- June 18, 2010 marks the 5th annual National HIT week, a collaborative forum of key healthcare constituents – including vendors, provider organizations, payers, pharmaceutical/biotech companies, government agencies, industry/professional associations, research foundations, and consumer protection groups – working together to elevate national attention to the necessity of advancing health IT. More at http://www.healthitweek.org/index.asp

• Community Health Data Initiative (http://www.hhs.gov/open/plan/opengovernmentplan/initiatives
/initiative.html) -The Department of Health & Human Services, as part of the Open Government Plan, is starting a major program with three goals: “ (1) raise awareness of community health performance, (2) increase pressure on decision makers to improve performance, and (3) help facilitate and inform action to improve performance” (see cited URL). The program will have two parts: first, HHS will make publically available a Community Health Data Set consisting of data aggregated from multiple source sources within the Department including: measures of health care quality, cost, access and public health (e.g., obesity rates, smoking rates, etc.), as well as never before available CMS data and health people 2020 data. It will also include a separate data warehouse and web portal for data access, now under development at the National Center for Health Statistics. Second, HHS will work with a broad variety of public and private organizations and individuals to determine uses for this data that will promote awareness of public health issues. This second effort will also consist of analyses of this data that provide examples for continued and further data use focused on quality improvement. DHHS has committed to a participatory and transparent approach to the data and analytic tools analysis methods, including sharing with other Federal agencies, to encourage broad us e and collaboration.

National Demonstration Project for PCMH In a special supplement to the journal Annals of Family Medicine, (http://www.annfammed.org/content/vol8/Suppl_1/), The American Academy of Family Practice and its subsidiary TransforMED reported on their two-year study of the feasibility of Patient-Centered Medical Home ). Reporting on the AAFP site, (http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/news-now/practice-management/20100607tmedndpfindings.html) Sheri Porter summarizes the study and findings. Of an initial group of thirty six practices, thirty one family practices participated in and completed the study. Conclusions were developed in four areas as follows: 1) it is possible for ‘highly motivated practices’ to implement the PCMH model, but it is possible to create a system that negatively affects the patient’s experience., 2) it took more than the two year study period for many practices implement the PCMH model even with intense facilitation,3) it is too early to determine the effect on quality of care and patient outcomes, and 4) dissemination of the model requires real work. The overall conclusion was “most primary care practices in the United States will need external resources to successfully undertake the magnitude of redesign envisioned in the PCMH,”

• Landscape Shifting for CHCs – A new joint project of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program of the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Services, Health Reform GPS, addresses many aspects of the new health reform legislation and associated implementation challenges. Addressing the issues facing community health centers, Feygele Jacobs, EVP of the RCHN Community Healthcare Foundation, posted this commentary: (http://www.healthreformgps.org/resources/feygele-jacobs-rchn-community-health-foundation). In the new, reformed healthcare world, CHCs will be expected to double their capacity in the next five years. This will entail all aspects of the health center including staff, training, facilities and both conventional and technology infrastructure. Health Centers will have to operate at a much faster pace as they deal with expanding primary care, qualify for meaningful use and develop medical home processes. Ms Jacobs concludes “Now comes the hard work of identifying and implementing systems that support health center operations and facilitate the collection and analysis of real information, and that will help take CHCs forward.”

• ONC IT Policy Committee Makes Recommendation for EHR Oversight (http://www.ihealthbeat.org/?setday=6/9/2010) – The California Healthcare Foundation, through its iHealthBeat website (June 9, 2010) reports that the IT Policy Committee of the Office of the National Coordinator for HIT has recommended that a national program for monitoring patient safety issues in health IT systems be developed. The Committee did not recommend that any specific agency, such as the FDA, be responsible for this program. Recently there has been considerable speculation that the FDA would require that EHRs be regulated as medical devices. It now appears that the ONC’s IT Policy Committee does not think that is necessary, but does think a monitoring program will be required.

• Community Collaboration to Improve Care and Reduce Disparities – The Durham Community Health Network (DCHN) is a public-private partnership which includes Duke University, Durham County HSS and several area hospitals and community health centers (Lincoln Community Health Center, Lyon Park Clinic and Walltown Clinic). A recent article in Health Affairs (Cook et al., http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/extract/29/5/956) describes DCHN’s participation in the Community Care of North Carolina (CCNC) program. CCNC provides care managers for Medicaid and CHIP enrollees and families with chronic illnesses. The program utilizes electronic alerts and community-based kiosks to help improve patient care and compliance. Previous programs have included an asthma pilot that standardized data collection and patient interaction, an EMR monitoring program that provided over 12,000 notices to care managers on such issues as emergency room visits and unfilled prescriptions, and a program that provided home visits to patients requesting home health assistance that made recommendations for inexpensive home healthcare devices that allowed independent living. The strength of the program is that care managers determine what programs and innovations are needed in the local community instead of a ‘one size fits all’ approach’.

• HHS Releases More ARRA Funding for HIT – As part of the funds allocated to HHS and HRSA through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), HHS Secretary Sibelius announced last week grant awards totaling $83.9 million to 45 health center controlled networks to support the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and other health information technology.
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/06/20100603a.html