The Foundation of Research and Education in Health Information Management will convene a national conference to address issues related to quality-based incentive programs and healthcare information technology. Stakeholders such as Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Information Technology (HIT) professionals, health services researchers, and other healthcare-related government, policy and private sector industry stakeholders will be invited to this conference. Managing health information and HIT form the fundamental underpinnings for overall better patient/consumer care, in terms of potentially broadening access (e.g., disparities of care for minority/vulnerable populations particularly in rural areas), cost savings (e.g., administrative efficiencies), and enhancing quality and patient safety. Although many quality improvement approaches manifest themselves in the growing number of US pay- for-performance (P4P) or quality improvement programs (e.g., hospital and physician- based), these programs have few ties to encouraging HIT adoption, until recently. This conference will include presentations on related work funded by AHRQ addressing access to care of disparate populations in rural community health centers;pay-for-performance and the economic implications facing rural physician practices and hospitals;and healthcare workforce issues implicit in caring for rural (and urban) disenfranchised populations. It is anticipated that this conference will identify future work that will build on the existing research. The purpose of this conference is to profile current field practices and identify research gaps to develop a quality improvement health services research agenda for implementation of HIT/HIM. Key Conference Objectives 1) present and discuss the economic and strategic impact of HIT/HIM on quality improvement initiatives and alternative methods for incentivizing quality of care, e.g., pay-for- performance, focusing on rural areas, healthcare disparities, and quality and patient safety;2) address current challenges and controversies, to include policy and practice in quality improvement (e.g., pay-for-performance/quality programs) and the current state of the research;3) create a """"""""quality-improvement-based"""""""" research agenda to address gaps in current research, policy and practice;and 4) identify infrastructure needs to ensure research moves forward and to identify strategic partners who will conduct collaborative research. The overarching conference aims will be twofold: 1) to explore ways of how to leverage the implementation of health information technology into rural and underserved areas;and 2) to explore alternative quality-based incenting methods to pay for health care. To that end, it is hoped that through the greater adoption and implementation of HIT/HIM in rural hospitals and small physician group offices, we will succeed in broadening access to and quality of care for vulnerable and disparate populations.
Relevance to Public Health: Setting a quality improvement research agenda will promote the adoption and implementation of HIT (e.g., electronic health records) and management of health information for medically underserved areas in the U.S. The focus of research will be on improving access, quality, and patient safety in the small physician offices, hospitals in rural areas. A critical component will address the management of health information and its translation to consumer health education.
