Rural Connection: Strengthening Care Through Technology

描述（由申请人提供）：爱达荷州农村联系（RC）是九家独立管理的医院和一所大学之间的伙伴关系。其中6家是农村医院，被指定为危重医院。该中心的重点是在农村和城市以及急症和康复机构之间往返的患者。通过自愿采用护理标准和严格的绩效改进进程，改善了健康结果。

DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): The Idaho Rural Connection (RC) is a partnership among nine independently governed hospitals and a university. Six of the hospitals are rural and are designated as Critical Access Hospitals. The RC focuses on patients as they move back and forth between rural and urban and acute and rehabilitation facilities. Health outcomes are improved through voluntary adoption of standards of care and a rigorous performance improvement process. RC is hampered in furthering its mission in two critical ways: The inability to easily share information for performance improvement; and The inability to rapidly exchange patient information. RC members recognize health information technology (HIT) as the vehicle that can reduce the identified problems and wants to deploy HIT that will include an electronic health record (EHR). This proposed HIT Planning Project is innovative in that it involves two small, rural communities in intense community planning processes. Planning teams are representative of end-users (i.e. physicians, nurses, and pharmacists), Information Technology (IT) experts, and patients. It is expected that by undertaking planning activities in more than one community, similarities and unique differences will be identified. The resulting HIT implementation plan for RC will accommodate those similarities and differences. The RC will be then be prepared to implement electronic health data sharing in the pilot communities and finally among all RC members.