Promises and Challenges of HIT in Community Health Centers

November 2005

Federally Qualified Health Care Program

ONCHIT

The Federal Landscape

CLINICCLINIC

CLINICCLINIC

334 Community Clinics

650 Health Care Sites

Stronger and Healthier

Communities

CCI’s Commitment in California

$40 in IT infrastructure development in community health centers

6 years of lessons-learned and best practices

Convergence

Success depends upon alignment and intersection of the paths of both initiatives.

CHCs serve almost 15 million people in the United States

Today’s Exploration

• Widespread adoption of HIT in a community clinic setting

• Reimbursement models to support widespread adoption

• Inclusion and support of CHCs in HIT development and funding policy

• CHC’s contribution to the overall conversation about uses of HIT for the wider health system

• Role of HIT to reduce disparities and improve health status

CHCs are Fundamentally Different

• Care for people regardless of their ability to pay

• Attention on the overall health of communities, not just individual patients

• Patient population is harder to reach and more difficult to serve 

• Heavily dependent on Medicaid reimbursement and federal and state grants 

• Deliver high quality health care, often at a lower cost than other providers

Resources and Information