This project will develop the infrastructure for """"""""bottom-up"""""""" practice-based research within the UCLA Primary Care Network (PCN), an organization that includes 20 primary care offices with 116 general internists, pediatricians, and family physicians. All of these physicians are full-time UCLA faculty and the Network is under the managerial control of the principal investigator. The PCN serves 150,000 patients, with a 45 percent managed-care payor mix. These patients reflect the considerable racial and ethnic diversity of Los Angeles. The funding requested is for Category I (infrastructure support). The proposed project will first establish oversight and advice from a Research Steering Committee and from a Community Advisory Board. It will then 1) design and implement systems for collecting self-reported race/ethnicity data from all PCN patients; 2) design and implement an information system that elicits clinical questions from primary care providers, helps them learn from their questions where answers are available, and helps them initiate research projects for the most important questions that remain unanswered; 3) adapt an existing Web-based survey system for inexpensive chart abstraction by office staff and then put chart abstraction to use in monitoring office-level adherence with preventive services recommendations; and 4) develop a plan for integrating research and data systems with Venice Family Clinic, the largest free clinic in the United States, which serves a largely uninsured, disadvantaged population. The UCLA team will bring a unique set of skills and resources to solving the difficulties of integrating research with practice. The principal investigator is an administrator with 10 years' experience managing a large academic practice organization, but who also has extensive prior experience as a researcher. The Co-principal investigator is an award-winning researcher in medical informatics and health services research who has expertise in software design and evaluation.
| Bell, Douglas S; Friedman, Maria A (2005) E-prescribing and the medicare modernization act of 2003. Health Aff (Millwood) 24:1159-69 |
