Community Health Centers - A Care Coordination Model On The Forefront Of Delivery Reform

Our nation’s healthcare system, and subsequently the healthcare information technology industry, has been increasingly emphasizing the advancement of the growing role – and need – that Community Health Centers (CHC) present as a care coordination and preventive medicine model toward improving population health.

 

But just what is a CHC? Basically, it is an outpatient healthcare provider that receives a substantial part of its funding from government payers or direct government grants, delegated by federal and state entities (through Medicare and Medicaid) to provide care to the uninsured and underserved. This includes Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), Rural Health Centers (RHC), Indian, migrant and homeless health centers. From a health IT perspective, the challenges of meeting the needs of CHCs revolve around unique reporting and reimbursement requirements that require a robust IT platform to facilitate compliance and promote greater clinical care functionalities as well.

 

While CHCs make up less than five percent of the ambulatory clinics in the United States, they are at the forefront of technology adoption, care coordination and population health management as a result of their governing agency’s (the Health Resources and Services Administration – HRSA) emphasis on quality improvement in healthcare. They were early participants in chronic disease management registries and population health data management. Through HRSA grants CHCs have formed alliances with regional health information organizations (RHIOs), state primary care associations (PCAs) and Health Center Controlled Networks (HCCN) to use population health management as a tool towards developing and implementing evidence-based medicine to improve healthcare outcomes.

 

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