Collaborating for Quality, Health Information Technology, and Workforce Improvement
Alison Hughes, MPA Rural Health Office, University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health Monday, November 14, 2005
This presentation will
• Discuss the health information technology aspects of the IOM report on “Quality Through Collaboration” • Discuss the Arizona Rural Health Plan’s focus on workforce disparities • Summarize the National and Arizona call to action HIT initiatives
IOM’s Quality Through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health
• Adopting an integrated approach to address both personal and population health needs • Establishing a stronger health care quality improvement support structure to assist rural health systems and professionals
IOM’s Quality Through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health
• Enhancing the human resource capacity of health care professionals in rural communities, and the preparedness of rural residents to actively engage in improving their health and health care • Enhancing the human resource capacity of health care professionals in rural communities, and the preparedness of rural residents to actively engage in improving their health and health care
IOM’s Quality Through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health • Assuring that rural health care systems are financially stable; and • Investing in an information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, which has enormous potential to enhance health and health care over the coming decade.
IOM’s Six Point Strategy to Ensure that No Rural Community is Left Behind
(1) including a rural component in the National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) plan (2) providing all rural communities with high-speed access to the Internet, (3) eliminating regulatory barriers to the use of telemedicine, (4) providing financial assistance to rural providers for investments in EHRs and ICT
IOM’s Six Point Strategy to Ensure that No Rural Community is Left Behind
(5) fostering ICT collaborations and demonstrations in rural areas, and (6) providing ongoing educational and technical assistance to rural communities so they can make the best use of ICT.
Arizona Rural Health Plan Objectives that Apply
• Strengthen the Statewide infrastructure to support an adequate rural health workforce • Coordinate resources for rural health care
Arizona Rural Health Plan Rural Workforce Disparities
• Lack of adequate numbers of
– – – – Behavioral health providers Primary care providers (physicians, nurss) Pharmacists Dentists
• Our hope: that the national and state HIT initiatives will contribute to reducing the rural workforce disparities.
In Combination…
The Institute of Medicine Report and the Arizona Rural Health Plan Objectives each contribute to the national and state call to action that creates the modern health information superhighway.
Summaries of the national and state initiatives follow.
The National H.I.T. Initiative
• Avoid medical errors • Improve quality of care • Accelerate bench to bedside • Empower consumers • Reduce costs
National Goals
• Nation-wide interoperable, standards-based network for the secure exchange of health care information available for most Americans within ten years.
Executive Order Articulates Vision, Goals and Position
• Vision of developing a nationwide interoperable infrastructure • Incentives for the Use of Health Information Technology • Establishing the Position of the National Health Information Technology Coordinator within the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Secretary
– Dr. Brailer named in May at the Secretary’s Health IT Summit
500 Day Plan to Advance Medical Research
• Creating an integrated electronic network of privacy-protected population data, genetic information and medical records to accelerate discoveries that will define an individual’s risk of disease, response to treatment and likelihood of a side effect. • Improving the clinical research network to advance better prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of disease.
National HHS Grant Awards Announced November 10, 2005
• $18.6 million to four groups of health care and health information technology organizations to develop prototypes for Nationwide Health Information Network architecture.
– Accenture, Computer Sciences Corporation (CC), International Business Machines (IBM), and Northrop Grumman.
Previous HHS Grants…
• To create processes to harmonize health information standards, develop criteria to certify and evaluate health IT products, and develop solutions to address variations in business policies and state laws that affect privacy and security practices that may pose challenges to the secure communication of health information.
Arizona E-Health Initiative
• Establish an Arizona Health-e Connection Roadmap with recommendations to the Governor for actions and key milestone dates to achieve within the next five years.
Arizona Steering Committee Appointed
• 39 member committee • Task groups within the Steering Committee will develop recommendations for
– Identifying e-health resources – Identifying technology options – Identifying optins for serving consumer health information needs – Ensuring information privacy and security – Facilitating statewide adoption of E.H.R. standards – Creating organizational and governance structures
Need Rural Involvement in Task Forces
• Broadband access in rural areas is critical to implementing the statewide health-e connection roadmap • Note: 21 Arizona sovereign nations. Most govern their own telecommunications systems
Need Rural Involvement*
• If you are interested in participating in a Steering Committee task force, complete the form in your conference packet and leave it at the registration desk. • Today’s goal is to agree on recommended steps for rural involvement in an Action Plan that will impact Arizona rural workforce issues through the use of the emerging e-health superhighway.
* Special thanks to Dr. Helga Rippon of ONCHIT for ideas used in this presentation.
Underground storage: The future of secure, private, standardized electronic health record storage systems!!!!