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)开发了一种创新且广泛适用的模式，为无法直接向专业医疗保健提供者提供治疗的慢性、常见和复杂疾病患者提供治疗。这种按需获取知识的模式被称为社区卫生保健成果回声扩展项目。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患者的一种手段，Echo项目可以帮助诊断和成功治疗许多其他慢性疾病和状况。Echo项目通过远程医疗网络将城市医疗中心疾病专家与农村全科医生和社区卫生代表联系起来。这使他们能够在现场有效地治疗患者，否则他们必须前往城市医疗机构进行专门治疗。Echo项目作为农村社区负担得起的医疗干预措施具有巨大的潜力，在农村社区，某些慢性病已经达到流行水平，医疗保健资源和人员稀缺。 Echo项目的目的是教育、培训和支持农村全科医生或其他现有的医疗代表，了解他们在社区遇到的复杂疾病的最佳实践治疗方案。该模式侧重于以病例为基础的学习和疾病管理的原则，使用远程医疗基础设施和基于互联网的技术，在基于社区的实践中共同管理患者。Echo项目的最终目标是为农村慢性病患者提供与城市环境中相同水平的医疗保健。次要目标是为农村地区提供 拥有与城市同行相称的互动和支持水平的医疗从业者，以提高他们的技术能力，减少他们的职业孤立感。Echo项目正在由新墨西哥州州立大学HSC专家在丙型肝炎领域主办的每周定期远程医疗诊所进行现场测试，通过使用UNM HSC远程医疗路径和基于互联网的接入，新墨西哥州各地的社区医疗保健提供者有机会提出病例，由网络参与者讨论，以共同做出治疗决定。

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.