NYC HEAL 5 Grant Category III: Pilot Implementations of Community-wide Interoperable EHRs

If you or a peer practice in NYC, this can be an excellent opportunity.
Please share this with information with others. SV

Background
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH)’s Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) is dedicated to improving the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care for Medicaid recipients and other underserved populations in New York City through the adoption and use of electronic health records (EHRs).

As part of a Mayoral initiative, the DOHMH has received $30 million from New York City, to support over 1,300 primary care providers to adopt an EHR that is designed to foster community health. To be eligible to participate in this element of the project, a provider must either practice in a District Public Health Office (DPHO) area, or care for a population where at least 30% of their patients are on Medicaid/Child health plus or are uninsured. These eligible providers will receive assistance that will allow them to implement the Take Care New York (TCNY) version of eClinicalWorks (eCW) EHR that contains special functionalities developed by the DOHMH that are designed to assist providers to deliver high quality preventative health care.

The DOHMH has secured additional external support to enhance the project and expand its eligibility criteria. It received a $3.2 million HEAL I, that will allow 29 NYC Community Health Centers (CHCs), comprised of 648 providers at more than 150 locations, to adopt an interoperable EHR system with public health functionality. It has received a $3 million Center of Excellence grant in public health informatics that it is using to research the optimal ways that EHRs can be used to support public health goals, such as improved population health. Finally, it has received a grant from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) to evaluate the project and disseminate its findings nationally.

HEAL V Goal
To assist over 650 primary care providers operating in the NYC community, who currently aren’t eligible for the mayoral funded program, to adopt an EHR that will allow them to improve the quality of care they deliver to their entire patient population.

Plan of Action
In HEAL NY Phase 5, DOHMH will serve as the lead applicant, or CHITA, to contract with New York State. This proposal will specifically extend the EHR to 665 providers, who aren’t eligible for the mayoral support project (i.e., do not care for a population where at least 30% of patients are on Medicaid/Child health plus or are uninsured), but who serve Medicaid beneficiaries and are interested in adopting a public health focused EHR including. Specialists would fall to hospitals or pay their own way. Non-eligible providers include:
a) Physician practices and ambulatory care clinicians in solo and small physician offices;
b) General hospital(s) with clinical affiliation to CHITA clinicians
c) Diagnostic and treatment centers and facilities
All providers participating in the project will receive the TCNY eCW EHR system that will contain decision support tools such as point-of-care reminders that incorporate clinical guidelines and specific public health indicators developed by the DOHMH and interfaces with DOHMH information systems such as the Citywide Immunization Registry. Using its existing contract, DOHMH will propose to use HEAL NY funds to purchase the licenses, implementation and support services, necessary to assist primary care providers to adopt the TCNY eCW EHR system, which is valued at approximately $12,000 per provider full time equivalent (FTE). Each provider FTE, however, will be expected to contribute $4,000 to a shared technical assistance pool and document at least $8,000 in in-kind contributions, which can include the purchase of new information technology hardware and lost productivity due to training and go-live scheduling.

Providers that are interested in participating in the project must complete an application (attached), a HEAL NY letter of intent and financial commitment form and return it to DOHMH by Friday November 9th, 2007. Completed documents should be sent via fax to (212) 788-3240 and via email to pcip@health.nyc.gov. Questions should be sent to Mat Kendall, PCIP Director of Operations mkendall@health.nyc.gov or Reena Samantaray, PCIP Outreach Coordinator rsamanta@health.nyc.gov (212) 341-2263