: The purpose of this application is to implement health information technologies designed to enable eastern Kern County to upgrade its healthcare delivery systems and meet the critical needs of a growing rural population.
Specific aims of the HIT planning project in rural eastern Kern County include: 1. Improve communication 2. Increase connectivity 3. Improve the management of chronic disease for those living and working in eastern Kern County, specifically focusing on coronary artery disease, diabetes, specific forms of cancer, and obesity 4. Reduce the incidence of polypharmacy and other issues of patient safety 5. Improve access and convenience to specialty care and ancillary services 6. Provide family medicine residents and others in the """"""""team training"""""""" environment with access to clinical information across all settings 7. Empower individuals in their own care, health, and well-being. We will achieve this by: 1) developing a regional collaborative; and 2) developing a business plan for implementing health information technology (HIT) in this region that links all partners in an effort to improve patient safety and quality of care for the residents of rural eastern Kern County. A community-oriented primary care research model will be used to obtain the requisite evidence to support the development of the business plan for HIT. Evidence will be obtained from key informant interviews, focus groups, and review of existing data. A telemedicine demonstration project will be conducted to assess the barriers and issues of the planned, broader HIT intervention. Logic modeling will be conducted to guide the collaborative in its planning process.
