COMMUNITY HEALTH LINK: ACCESS TO INFORMATION RESOURCES - DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Project Goals and Specific Aims: This application was submitted in 2002 for similar services. The project was redesigned based on the critiques provided by NLM staff. Specifically, the following changes were made: demographic profiles of clients served at clinics is provided; elimination of all references to Electronic Medical Record System, inclusion of training and provisions to comply with HIPPA requirements; and revision of budget items as required. The Primary Care Coalition (Coalition) is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization located in Montgomery County, Maryland. Its mission is to develop an accessible, integrated, culturally and linguistically competent system of care for low income uninsured children and adults, estimated at 100,000. Montgomery County's uninsured residents are currently served by a safety-net system of private, non-profit clinics, known as Community HealthLink (CHL). CHL serves 15,000 low-income, uninsured Montgomery County residents annually. This project will improve the quality of these services by offering access to networked health information to the clinics' professional and administrative staff. The goals are to: (1) Provide needed infrastructure for access to information resources by equipping each clinic site with dedicated hardware and computer applications, including Internet browsers that can be used for health information research and communication; (2) Provide access to the National Library of Medicine's resources, such as MEDLINEplus, ClinicalTrials.gov; (3) Link the clinics to Internet resources, including PubMed, evidence-based medical & pharmaceutical web sites, clinical practice guidelines, health policy web sites, health education web sites for patient education in prevention and self care, grants and funding resource information, and quality filtered web pages on primary and specialty care; (4) Design and install "clinical desktops" at each site, which will include icons that connect users to (a) medical information with pre-built links to medical literature resources, (5) Identify one staff member at each participating site to take the lead in learning the system, completing the training, and, in turn, training other providers at his or her site to use the system; (6) Contract for training in the use of information resources, delivered by train-the-trainer classroom workshops at the Himmelfarb Library at George Washington University (GWU); (7) Contract with Karyn Pomerantz at GWU to provide "house calls" to the participating clinics, including visits to clinic staff meetings. Time will be spent consulting with the lead staff members and helping them train other staff members.
