The Wal-Mart Foundation last week presented a $25,000 grant to the Chad Brown Health Center in Providence, in collaboration with the Rhode Island Quality Institute, to help the center upgrade its electronic medical record system to comply with Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) standards.
Gloria Rose, executive director of the center, answered questions about the facility, how it uses EMRs, and what the upgrade will mean for patient care.
PBN: You are an unusual health center, located within a public housing complex. Tell me a bit about the people you serve and the services you provide.
ROSE: The patients of Chad Brown Health Center are primarily low-income, uninsured and underinsured, the most vulnerable to chronic health problems. They reflect the community in which we are based: 41 percent African American, 35 percent Latino, 13 percent white, and 11 percent other ethnicities. Between 25 and 30 percent live in public housing, and many others are former residents.
Our mission is to provide high-quality comprehensive health care to all patients, regardless of ability to pay. We are a family practice clinic staffed with a physician and nurse practitioners, and we provide culturally sensitive primary care from infancy to old age. We care for about 1,600 patients, with about 5,000 visits a year, and are the primary care providers for over 800 children under the age of 18. We also have on-site ob/gyn services as well as a WIC program, which services over 950 clients.
PBN: How long have you been using electronic medical records, and why did you invest in them?
ROSE: Chad Brown was the first community health center in the state to implement an EMR, in 2004. We realized the potential for improving quality of patient care as well being able to reduce the cost of providing that care. This is a very important factor for any community health center, but especially so for a center as small as ours. We do not receive any federal funding, but must meet all the requirements of a federally funded health center. Utilizing technology was an important step for us to be able to meet the requirements in reporting and quality improvement initiatives.
PBN: How have EMRs changed the health center, and hopefully improved the care you provide?
ROSE: We realized immediate improvements. EMRs are much more efficient then having to flip through a paper chart. The electronic records enabled our providers to easily access a patient’s entire medical history. We were able to increase the providers’ productivity but also make the visit more smooth and even more personable. The information needed to provide safe care is available at the click of one button. It is so much easier for a provider to sit and talk with a patient than having to be going back and forth in a chart and focusing on paper, then the person in front of them. We also were able to participate in e-prescribing, which is much more efficient and safe method for providers to prescribe medications.
PBN: What is the value of going for a CCHIT-certified EMR?
ROSE: CCHIT-certified EMRs must meet certain rigorous standards and have interoperability capabilities. This is very important since the state, through the efforts of the Rhode Island Quality Institute, is at the forefront of having a personalized and accessible health record for every resident. Chad Brown Health Center wishes to continue to be at the forefront of community health centers utilizing technology, and this is a very important standard for us. Continuity of care is critical since it reduces medical errors by allowing authorized providers access to a person’s whole picture of health care, which may be invaluable in an emergency. In addition to interoperability and making a patient’s data portable, a CCHIT-certified EMR must meet stringent security standards. This is, of course, key in making patients comfortable with having a completely portable record.
PBN: How valuable is it for you to have gotten this Wal-Mart grant?
ROSE: This grant is very valuable to us. We have wanted to upgrade to a newer more robust version of our EMR for some time, but we are small and have limited resources which are becoming even scarcer. It’s amazing how much support Wal-Mart provides in this community. We’re very grateful. This funding has allowed us to accelerate our whole process of upgrade and migration to the new version of Soapware, our current EMR. In addition, we were able to expand our project to include building an interface with the medical billing company who we outsource our billing to. This will let us realize financial improvements and reduce some of our administrative costs as well as accelerate our revenue stream. This grant allowed us to move from the planning stage to implementation stage immediately. We knew what we had to do, but had not been able to accomplish it prior to receiving this grant.
