Health Center Controlled Network - The Health Center Network of New York, Inc. (dba HealthEfficient), formed in 2007 as a mission-driven, not-for-profit organization to help community health centers and other healthcare providers improve their clinical and operational performance by using health information technology, collaborative efforts, and targeted support to deliver efficient, data-driven, evidence-based care to underserved communities. HealthEfficient’s Qual IT Care Alliance, a HRSA-funded HCCN, began in August 2013 with 10 Participating Health Centers (PHCs). Since then, we continually and sustainably grew our network. Today, the Qual IT Care Alliance HCCN supports 47 health centers, including 45 FQHCs (H80 grantees) and 2 FQHC Look-Alikes. We propose to expand to support 61 PHCs. Based on HRSA 2023 UDS data, the current PHCs collectively served 1.02 million patients across 6 states, the District of Columbia, and the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands. The sites include health centers of varying sizes, as well as those serving urban, rural, migrant, and school-based populations. Successes: During the prior HCCN project period, we achieved sustained success across all goal areas, exceeding targets in Data Utilization and Improving Digital Health Tools. We collaborated with PHCs on individualized workplans, enabling them to enhance digital health tools, improve HealthIT usability, boost patient engagement, address social risk factors, and advance interoperable data exchange. Our efforts included security risk assessments, annual meetings, webinars, and training sessions. In this new round of HCCN funding, HealthEfficient plans to build on and expand the success of the existing Qual IT Care Alliance project. Groups to be Served: Our proposed network will include 61 health centers, of which 57 are FQHCs and 4 are FQHC Look-Alikes, collectively serving 1.5 million patients. This network covers 10 states, including the addition of new members in California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. Needs to be Addressed/Proposed Services: The Qual IT Care Alliance will address common health center needs by enhancing PHC data management analytics capabilities, including quality improvement and value-based care dashboards for advanced data strategies; providing support for interoperability and data sharing; assisting PHCs with submitting patient-level UDS data; improving health IT usability and adoption; supporting the use of data/HIT systems to support value-based care arrangements; and addressing patients’ health related social needs. HealthEfficient will support these PHC needs using a combination of one-on-one practice facilitation; collaborative work groups; webinars; training best practice workflows and EHR configuration recommendations; and producing data dashboards. These activities will play a vital role in enhancing PHC ability to improve the health status of their vulnerable communities, while navigating the evolving value-based care environment. Many of the PHCs in the Qual IT Care Alliance use the eClinicalWorks EHR system, which enables us to provide a deep level of unified support and collaboration to overcome technical and workflow challenges. In partnership with the District of Columbia Primary Care Association, Florida Association of Community Health Centers, and the Pacific Islands Primary Care Association, HealthEfficient will support PHCs that are not using eClinicalWorks based on our collective EHR product knowledge and topics that are vendor neutral. We also plan to contract with others to serve as EHR-specific experts to support achievement of grant objectives. With HCCN funding through the cooperative agreement, HealthEfficient will continue to provide opportunities for peer collaboration through these workgroups: Clinical Quality Improvement, CMO Round Table and Steering Committee; Health Information Technology; Data Analytics; Patient Engagement and Access; and our newly proposed Value-Based Care workgroup.
