R.I. Quality Institute receives $2.7M grant

THE RHODE Island Quality Institute has received a two-year $2.7 million federal grant to support a project to improve care coordination and transitions for long-term care patients and caregivers.
THE RHODE Island Quality Institute has received a two-year $2.7 million federal grant to support a project to improve care coordination and transitions for long-term care patients and caregivers.

PROVIDENCE – The nonprofit Rhode Island Quality Institute has received a two-year $2.7 million grant to support its Sharing Health Information for Transitions in Care project to improve care coordination and transitions for long-term care patients and caregivers.
The grant, from the federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, will enable the Rhode Island Quality Institute’s CurrentCare and Regional Extension Center to expand the capacity for the statewide exchange of health care information.
The grant will support the integration of electronic health records from long-term/post-acute care facilities, leading to the ability to alert primary care and other providers in the community when patients are admitted to or discharged from long-term care facilities in the state.
John Gage, chief operating officer, Health Concepts Ltd., which operates 12 skilled nursing facilities in Rhode Island that provide sub-acute nursing and rehabilitation, Alzheimer’s care and long-term care services, said that patients from long-term/post-acute care facilities “are a population with complex health care needs who may require various specialists, often resulting in duplication of services, care fragmentation and inaccurate, incomplete or delayed transfer of health information.”

“This project will fill gaps in timing of communications, quality of the data exchanged and availability of the information to both patient and provider where needed,” he said.

The project’s main objectives are to increase the number of health IT services adopted and used by providers and individuals, increase the electronic exchange of information by assisting care providers and individuals with sharing health records through CurrentCare, address the ability of disparate systems to securely exchange information and promote better access to their health information for individuals.

Said Darlene Morris, director, regional extension center, RIQI, “We’re very pleased to have been awarded this funding and look forward to providing even more support for the transformation of our health care delivery system” in Rhode Island.

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Participating patients and their family members and other caregivers also will be provided access to their data in CurrentCare and will be taught the benefits of viewing, downloading and transmitting their information using data portals.

“The Rhode Island Quality Institute continues to lead the way on health information exchange. This funding will enable connections between CurrentCare and long-term care facilities, which for far too long have been left out of our health IT infrastructure. Connecting these facilities will help health care providers better coordinate care and improve health outcomes. I congratulate RIQI on earning this award,” U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who founded RIQI during his time as the R.I. Attorney General, said in a statement.

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