Health Center Controlled Network - In Texas, 75 Health Centers and Look-Alikes serve over 1.8 million patients, of whom 68% live at 100% or below the federal poverty level (FPL). The health center program has grown 52% in the past ten years, providing over 6.8 million clinic visits in 2023. 41% of FQHC sites in Texas are rural. Health centers in Texas serve a diverse population, 59% are Hispanic and 13% are African-American. Health insurance coverage for patients consists of 34% uninsured, 36% Medicaid/CHIP, 7% Medicare, and 23% private insurance. Currently, 56 of the 75 Health Centers in Texas belong to the TACHC HCCN, 54 are Health Center Program (H80) award recipients, and two are designated as Look-Alikes. TACHC’s HCCN serves Participating Health Centers’ (PHCs) by supporting the implementation of technical and data driven strategies to improve the patient and clinical workforce experience and the health of the populations, while reducing cost. To accomplish these goals, health centers must obtain timely, actionable clinical data, compile it with other non-clinical data, and ensure their organization is capable of utilizing it to operationalize data-driven improvements. This may include automating processes to relieve provider burden, preparing for and responding to emergencies, and exchanging data with partners. All must be done while ensuring privacy and security of patient data and avoiding downtime. Accomplishing these goals will position PHCs to meet the goals of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Quintuple Aim. To gather and provide these data and services to health centers, TACHC operates a HCCN under HRSA cooperative agreement number U86CS45897 and proposes to expand that project. This proposal builds upon TACHC’s many years working with our PHCs. We sponsor a statewide data system hosted by Azara Healthcare that extracts clinical and operational data from PHC EHRs, HIEs, and payers. From the compiled, structured data in this platform, the HCCN enables centers to produce near real –time reports to inform clinical quality performance and improvement priorities. The system provides analysis and graphically depicts performance for Uniform Data System (UDS), HEDIS measures, key metrics from national partners such as American Medical Association, and the PHC’s own goals. The HCCN enables clinical quality measure benchmarking and sharing of de-identified data among PHCs. Our many years of experience as the state’s Primary Care Association and convener of the HCCN has yielded many lessons on the need for strong IT infrastructure and robust data systems. A constantly changing healthcare landscape, frequent regulatory changes, and increasingly severe disasters and cybersecurity threats put additional strains on PHCs and their communities. PHCs also operate in an environment transitioning to value-based care (VBC), which increases the need for, and complexity of, data reporting. PHCs engaging with peers, staff, faculty, and consultants use the HCCN as a learning network that facilitates diffusion of knowledge and best practices. By networking with state Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), other HCCNs, and various national workgroups, the HCCN also serves as a link to best practices and industry standards for our PHCs. This project supports data needs of PHCs and takes advantage of economies of scale by providing group trainings and technical assistance (TA) on various HRSA prioritized topics to improve the patient and provider experience at the health center, advance interoperability of data exchange and integration in a secure manner, provide timely access to quality reporting to inform patient needs, clinical care plans, and non-clinical care interventions, and utilize digital tools and telemedicine/telehealth platforms to expand access to healthcare services.
