Christiana Care Health System a private, not-for-profit tertiary-care hospital system with locations in Wilmington and Newark, Del., has launched two major initiatives that aim to drive healthcare IT adoption among community physicians.
In its first initiative, Christiana Care in partnership with Quality Insights of Delaware – the state’s health information exchange and designated Regional Extension Center – has set aside $1 million dollars to help practices adopt electronic health records.
A portion of the funding went towards a recently launched pilot project, which includes 10 small practices of various specialties. Providers have received $10,000 or 85 percent of the costs for an EHR system, whichever is lower, said Randy Gaboriault, vice president and CIO of Christiana Care.
Gaboriault says the remaining money will be given to practices on a first-come, first-serve basis.
“We expect to light the community on fire with this pilot,” says Gaboriault.
Because the state HIE’s current written interface is for Allscripts that is the vendor selected for the project.
Gaboriault says giving physicians these tools will prove “indispensable.” Having doctors connected to the HIE is a “bullet proof way to move core data back and forth,” he says.
Gaboriault hopes that those who participate in the pilot will serve as a leader to drive the movement within the community.
Christiana Care's computerized provider order entry system, which launched this past January, and is now at 100 percent uptake at both hospitals, will also be leveraged during the project.
"CPOE transforms the way we provide care to our patients because it emphasizes patient safety by dramatically reducing the risk of medication and order entry errors," says Terri Steinberg, MD, Christiana Care's chief medical information officer. "It also helps doctors to be more efficient in patient care.”
CPOE is also tied into the system’s second initiative to hardwire health IT into the core curriculum for its July 2010 class of nearly 100 medical and dental residents and fellows.
Christiana Care will also provide ongoing education to approximately 1,500 community physicians, helping them to be meaningful users of medical informatics for safer and more effective care.
Robert J. Laskowski, MD, president and chief executive officer of Christiana Care Health System, writes on the Health Affairs blog that residents and fellows "will not graduate without being certified in computerized provider order entry training and the use of medical informatics to practice more safely and effectively."
He says that in terms of ongoing education Christiana Care will "find creative ways to help busy doctors learn this vital new skill. Rather than forcing physicians to come to us, we are creating a training program that will bring our information specialists to them, training them in their offices, with their technology."
Gaboriault says the curriculum aids at embedding professionals as “seeds” in the community who can speak to the credibility of what adopting the technology can really do for them.
