The Correct Approach to Care Management
Friday, November 12th, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure and honor of moderating a webinar, sponsored by the Care Continuum Alliance, which included Aaron McKethan, PhD, Beacon Community director, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for HIT; and Patrick Gordon, Colorado Beacon Consortium director. I wrote favorably about the Beacon Community Program when it was announced in May, because I view this program as a true Beacon for change in healthcare IT in this country.
As a quick refresher, the Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program provides funding to selected communities to build and strengthen their health information technology (health IT) infrastructure and exchange capabilities. The program supports these communities at the cutting edge of electronic health record (EHR) adoption and health information exchange to push them to a new level of sustainable health care quality and efficiency. The program also will show how other communities can use health IT to achieve similar goals.
The purpose of this federally-funded pilot is to provide selected members of the healthcare community with the potential to define HIT’s influence on the future of healthcare delivery as we push toward accountable, evidence- based, community-focused care. During the webinar which discussed the program at length both from an administrative perspective as well as an “on the ground” perspective, I was particularly struck by one of Dr. McKethan’s slides: Read the rest of this entry →
