Pilot Project
Posted Thursday, December 18, 2008
Health-e-LA has joined forces with two of its members, the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County (CCALAC) and Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (LAC DHS), to improve the coordination and delivery of health care provided for the most vulnerable populations across Los Angeles County. This countywide Health-e-LA project seeks to improve the exchange of patient information between non-profit community clinics and the LAC DHS system by leveraging current partner resources and health information technology (HIT) funding initiatives. It is important to note that this project offers a system-wide approach to improved exchange of clinical data.
LAC DHS has created an Encounter Summary Sheet (ESS), which is a patient history that is web-accessible and includes administrative and clinical information, such as diagnostics and frequency of visits, procedures performed, past and future appointments and a history of dispensed medications. Currently this ESS “document” only records information for the services that patients receive at LAC DHS facilities and dated claims data for LAC DHS-reimbursed services provided at the community clinics. These data are currently only accessible to clinicians at LAC DHS facilities. The Health-e-LA project seeks to expand the type and timeliness of clinical information reflected in the ESS and makes the data available to clinicians in the community clinics as well.
Currently, the CCALAC membership collectively uses over 15 different practice management systems (PMS) for registration, billing, etc., and many of these systems do not have the capacity to send HL7 messages to other systems. Recognizing this, the Tools for Quality (Tools) Initiative recently awarded funds to 14 clinics within the CCALAC membership to implement the i2i disease management system, which auto-populates from the clinics’ PMS and has the capacity to communicate easily with other systems. Two other CCALAC members already have this system. This proposal seeks to leverage the i2i capacity in the 16 clinics (representing 44 clinical sites) by developing one interface between i2i and the LAC DHS’ Encounter Summary Sheet. This interface will allow crucial, timely medical data to flow between the LAC DHS and community clinics, thus strengthening the cohesiveness of the county’s safety net system. It should be noted that leveraging one interface to collect information from 16 (and ultimately 24) community clinics and compile it with data from the entire County system represents a profound system-wide impact on the quality of care for a relatively small investment.
In addition, the project will expand CCALAC’s capacity to provide HIT technical assistance to its membership and to complement and continue the work of Tools and Building Clinic Capacity for Quality – Phase II (BCCQ II) initiatives. The Tools and BCCQ II initiatives have established learning collaboratives to support specific HIT projects within the community clinics. Through this project CCALAC will be able to continue to work collaboratively with the other key initiatives ultimately to support the clinics.
CCALAC will also work with its member clinics to identify those interested in applying for the second round of Tools funding scheduled for early 2009, and provide technical support to these clinics so as to expand the number of clinics connected to and utilizing the ESS.
Health-e-LA and its members are committed to a transparent and collaborative process and as such welcomes any/all participation from community stakeholder groups. Health information exchange continues to offer real hope for improved care and reduction of costs. Working together, we can make a difference for the citizens of our community.