El Dorado County Safety Net Technology Project/Access El Dorado County (ACCEL)
Project Final Report (PDF, 443.54 KB) Disclaimer
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Project Details -
Completed
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Grant NumberUC1 HS016129
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AHRQ Funded Amount$1,491,985
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Principal Investigator(s)
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Organization
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LocationPlacervilleCalifornia
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Project Dates09/30/2005 - 09/29/2009
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Technology
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Type of Care
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Health Care Theme
The El Dorado County Safety Network Technology Project was an ambitious effort undertaken by Access El Dorado (ACCEL) to increase the patient safety and quality of care delivered to uninsured and underinsured children. ACCEL is a partnership between the El Dorado County Health Services Department, Barton Healthcare System, Marshall Medical Center, El Dorado County Community Health Center, and Shingle Springs Tribal Community Health Clinic. ACCEL includes many disciplines: physicians, nurses, community health workers, mental health clinicians, and administrators.
Based on the successful outcome-based model, ACCEL utilizes a Care Pathways approach that includes step-by-step actions for resolving problems and tracking outcomes as part of the process. ACCEL has developed and implemented seven Care Pathways aimed at increasing access to care. These Pathways focus on identifying and helping individuals who need to secure health insurance coverage, assisting individuals in securing a medical home, using a medical home appropriately, accessing pediatric mental health services, and gaining access to local specialty care services. Community health outreach workers from ACCEL participating agencies help individuals and families navigate complex medical systems and access providers to ensure that the problem or barrier to getting appropriate health care is resolved and that clients learn related self-care behaviors.
The Safety Net Technology Project focused on three main goals to improve health care coordination across providers in El Dorado:
- Expand the scope and geographic reach of Care Pathways.
- Implement a health information technology tool for Care Pathways, using iREACH (a product of InfoCom).
- Develop a county-wide Health Information Exchange (HIE) that would support clinical data sharing.
Care Pathways successfully assisted over 3,300 children. Notably, the Care Pathway that connects children who visit the emergency department (ED) with a medical home was estimated to yield a 40 percent reduction in ED costs among those children who were successfully established with a medical home (86 percent of referrals). In addition, the transition of Care Pathways to iREACH led to greater efficiencies in case management, standardizing processes across agencies, and permitting the development of quality assurance tracking. While ACCEL was unable to implement the HIE, largely due to the long-term financial commitment to be initiated during an economic recession, this project laid the groundwork to support future adoption of the HIE and increased networking, particularly with respect to data exchange, among key players in the rural county.
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