: The Idaho Rural Connection (RC) is a partnership among nine independently governed hospitals and a university. Six of the hospitals are rural and are designated as Critical Access Hospitals. The RC focuses on patients as they move back and forth between rural and urban and acute and rehabilitation facilities. Health outcomes are improved through voluntary adoption of standards of care and a rigorous performance improvement process. ? RC is hampered in furthering its mission in two critical ways: The inability to easily share information for performance improvement; and The inability to rapidly exchange patient information. RC members recognize health information technology (HIT) as the vehicle that can reduce the identified problems and wants to deploy HIT that will include an electronic health record (EHR). This proposed HIT Planning Project is innovative in that it involves two small, rural communities in intense community planning processes. Planning teams are representative of end-users (i.e. physicians, nurses, and pharmacists), Information Technology (IT) experts, and patients. It is expected that by undertaking ? planning activities in more than one community, similarities and unique differences will be identified. The resulting HIT implementation plan for RC will accommodate those similarities and differences. The RC will be then be prepared to implement electronic health data sharing in the pilot communities and finally among all RC members. ? ? ?
