Project ECHO Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes

描述（由申请人提供）：新墨西哥大学健康科学中心（UNM HSC）开发了一种创新和广泛适用的模式，为无法直接获得专业医疗保健提供者的慢性、常见和复杂疾病患者提供治疗。这种按需知识模式被称为项目ECHO——社区医疗保健成果扩展。作为治疗新墨西哥州农村社区和监狱系统中感染丙型肝炎病毒的一种手段，ECHO项目可以帮助诊断和成功治疗许多其他慢性疾病和病症。ECHO项目通过远程保健网络将城市医疗中心的疾病专家与农村全科医生和社区卫生代表联系起来。这使他们能够有效地在现场治疗患者，否则他们将不得不前往城市医疗机构进行专业治疗。ECHO项目具有巨大的潜力，可作为农村社区负担得起的保健干预措施，在这些社区，某些慢性病已达到流行病水平，保健资源和人员匮乏。

DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (UNM HSC) has developed an innovative and widely applicable model to provide treatment for patients with chronic, common and complex diseases who do not have direct access to specialty healthcare providers. This knowledge-on-demand model is called Project ECHO - Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes. Conceived as a means to treat HCV-infected patients in New Mexico's rural communities and prison system, Project ECHO can assist in diagnosing and successfully treat many other chronic illnesses and conditions. Project ECHO connects urban medical center disease experts with rural general practitioners and community health representatives over a telehealth network. This enables them to effectively treat patients on site who would otherwise have to travel to urban healthcare facilities for specialty treatment. Project ECHO has enormous potential as an affordable healthcare intervention in rural communities where certain chronic diseases have reached epidemic levels and healthcare resources and personnel are scarce. The purpose of Project ECHO is to educate, train, and support rural general practitioners or other available healthcare representatives on the best practice treatment protocols for complex diseases they encounter in their communities. This model focuses on the principles of case-based learning and disease management using the telemedicine infrastructure and internet-based technologies to co-manage patients in community-based practices. The ultimate goal of Project ECHO is to provide the same level of healthcare to rural patients with chronic diseases as can be obtained in an urban setting. A secondary goal is to provide rural healthcare practitioners with a level of interaction and support commensurate with their urban counterparts to enhance their technical competence and decrease their feelings of professional isolation. Project ECHO is being field-tested in weekly, regularly scheduled telemedicine clinics hosted by UNM HSC specialists in the areas of hepatitis C. Through use of the UNM HSC Telehealth pathways and internet-based access, community healthcare providers around New Mexico are afforded the opportunity to present cases which are discussed among the network participants to jointly reach treatment decisions.