Erie Family Health Center is submitting this proposal on behalf of the Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services (Alliance), a network of four federally funded health centers located in Chicago. The Alliance was chosen by the Bureau of Primary Health Care to implement an Electronic Health Records System (EHRS). Based on the recommendations published by the IOM for the integration of HIT into clinical practice, the Alliance is committed to the implementation of an EHRS which maximizes the usefulness of managing information to support quality improvement and the provision of safe and effective health care. In partnership with the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) the Alliance developed the Enhancing Quality In Patient Care (EQUIP) project to augment its EHRS implementation. The project will advance the application of a set of consensus evidenced-based practice measures developed by the AMA to improve the quality of care. The goals of this project are to: Implement EHRS in a network of CHC in a manner that ensures consistency of health information across all practitioners, sites and populations; Develop a data warehouse that will monitor, aggregate, and provide data to be used for clinical and system quality improvement; Utilize the EHRS/data warehouse to facilitate and encourage the use of evidence-based practice measures at the point of care; Utilize the EHRS/data warehouse to facilitate continuous improvement of health care quality and safety and develop its function as a patient registry; Promote and support the realization of the full potential of EHRS use in ambulatory care settings to improve health care quality and safety. The Alliance is poised to implement this project because the necessary partnerships and infrastructure are in place to implement an EHRS. This project has potential to positively impact the implementation of the EHRS and the application of evidenced-based decision support in more than 3,000 urban and rural health care centers across the United States. ? ?
