Community
Service Council
Main Towers Building
16 East 16th Street,
Suite 202
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74119-4402
918 / 585-5551 phone
918 / 585-3285 fax
The Council is a citizen-
led non-profit United Way member agency
and a member of the
National
Association
of Planning Councils
Questions or comments
about this website?
E-mail the
Webmaster
Copyright© 2009
Community Service Council
Tulsa Becomes a Beacon Community
for Nationwide Advances in Health IT
The new
Greater Tulsa Health Access Network
(Greater THAN, or GTHAN) receives
$12,043,948
The Greater Tulsa Health Access Network (Greater THAN or GTHAN) is a not-for-profit organization committed to facilitating health information exchange to improve health care for residents in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma.
In May 2010, GTHAN, applying in partnership with the Community Service Council, became one of fifteen communities (selected from 130 applicants) to be awarded a Beacon Community grant from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
GTHAN's Purpose and Formation
Excerpted from the GTHAN RFP, on the GreaterTHAN website
In June 2009, Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor invited health care providers in the area to join forces in the Greater THAN project, to work collectively towards improving the quality of care for residents. She asked the community to form a task force to:
Guide the City of Tulsa’s actions with respect to health care development;
Encourage coordinated efforts in the private health care sector;
Further public and private partnerships for the development of an electronic health information infrastructure, and
Maximize federal financial participation to support early adoption of the electronic health information infrastructure that provides needed information at the point of patient care.
The mayor also stressed the importance of aligning GTHAN efforts with other regional information exchange efforts, the state of Oklahoma, and national efforts, to protect the
privacy and security of information, and to engage consumers and health care purchasers in improving the access and value of medical care while controlling costs.
Greater THAN constituents consist of hospitals, first responders (ambulance, police and fire department), public health, clinic groups, safety-net or essential care clinics (including federally qualified health centers [FQHCs]), mental health service providers, laboratories, pharmacies, physical therapists, patients, university medical systems, and tribal health systems. The coalition is expected to grow. Constituents currently believe that they can make significant progress towards improving medical care economically by enabling collaboration between themselves, and have therefore designated health information exchange as the primary focus and purpose for the Greater THAN coalition.
The Beacon
Communities
An email from Dr. David
Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology,
U.S.
Department of Health & Human Services, to Jan Figart, CSC
May 5, 2010 -- Healthcare professionals appreciate opportunities to learn from innovative colleagues and communities – to see what really works, to get “boots-on-the-ground” perspectives, to learn best practices, and to use the experience of other leaders to inform how to improve performance more broadly.
The Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program, by its very design, was intended to shine a spotlight on health information technology (health IT) innovators, so that we all might learn from them. Yesterday, Secretary Sebelius awarded $220 million to establish 15 Beacon Communities throughout America. These community consortia – selected from 130 applicants – have demonstrated leadership in developing advanced health IT solutions to help improve specific health outcomes. They also share a strong conviction in the benefits of health IT as a critical pillar to advance broad and sustainable health system improvement. The average award amount is $15 million over 36 months.
The Beacon Community awards recognize collaborative community efforts operating at the cutting edge of health IT and health care delivery system innovation. Beacon Communities will implement a range of care delivery innovations building on existing infrastructure of interoperable health IT and standards-based information exchange, in coordination with the Regional Extension Center Program and State Health Information Exchange Program.
In addition, the program will help Beacon Communities plan and develop new initiatives that can ensure the longer-term sustainability of health IT-enabled improvements in health care quality, safety, efficiency, and population health. This includes preparing for future policy changes resulting from enactment of health care reform legislation that will permit providers, states, and regional health care organizations to test new payment methods emphasizing improvements in quality and value.
Like so many other providers who effectively implement health IT, Beacon Communities will leverage other existing federal programs and resources to promote health information exchange at the community level. These resources include:
- Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) program, which aims to develop a longitudinal electronic health record for all active duty, Guard and Reserve, retired military personnel, and eligible separated Veterans
- Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) programs at federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and Health Center Controlled Networks (HCCNs) to advance the adoption of certified electronic health records and exchange of health information
- Department of Agriculture and Department of Commerce efforts to extend broadband infrastructure
The partnership with applicable VLER, FQHC, and HCCN sites is particularly important to ensure we realize measurable and tangible results in federally funded, military, and private sector health care settings alike....
Especially, I am particularly pleased by the diversity among Beacon awardees: geographically, they span the continental United States and reach as far as Hawaii; both urban and rural communities are well represented; and targeted program outcomes span some of America’s most pressing health concerns, from reducing medication errors and improving the care of individuals with cardiovascular disease to reducing disparities in access and outcomes for patients with diabetes. Additionally, the programs bring health IT innovation to a variety of underserved populations to address health disparities and improve patient care. The Beacon Communities demonstrate that health IT can bring meaningful change to health care for all Americans — not just the healthiest, wealthiest, or best insured.
I extend my sincere congratulations to our 15 Beacon Communities. Your work inspires me, and I believe that in the coming months, it will inspire and inform America’s medical and health IT communities.
Beacon Community Awards
News release from the White House
May 4, 2010 - Washington, D.C. - Vice President Biden and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced the selection of 15 communities across the country to serve as pilot communities for eventual wide-scale use of health information technology through the Beacon Community program. The $220 million in Recovery Act awards will not only help achieve meaningful and measurable improvements in health care quality, safety and efficiency in the selected communities, but also help lay the groundwork for an emerging health IT industry that is expected to support tens of thousands of jobs.
“These pioneering communities are going to lead the way in bringing smarter, lower-cost health care to all Americans through use of electronic health records. Because of their early efforts, doctors across the country will one day be able to coordinate patient care with the stroke of a key or pull up life-saving health information instantly in an emergency – and for the residents of these communities, that future is about to become a reality,” said Vice President Biden. “Thanks to the Recovery Act’s historic investment in health IT, we’re not only advancing the way health care is delivered in this country, we’re also building a whole new industry along with it – one that will shape our 21st Century economy for generations to come and employ tens of thousands of American workers.”
“The most important health care innovations are those that are designed and tested by providers and community leaders all across the country. Beacon Communities will offer insight into how health IT can make a real difference in the delivery of health care,” said Secretary Sebelius. “The Beacon Community Program will tap the best ideas across America and demonstrate the enormous benefit health IT will have to improving health and care within our communities.“
The selected Beacon Communities will use health IT resources within their community as a foundation for bringing doctors, hospitals, community health programs, federal programs and patients together to design new ways of improving quality and efficiency to benefit patients and taxpayers. Each Beacon Community has elected specific and measurable improvement goals in each of three vital areas for health systems improvement: quality, cost-efficiency, and population health. The goals vary according to the needs and priorities of each community.
For example, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a community dealing with an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes that has the highest rate of cardiovascular disease deaths in the nation, the award will help 1,600 physicians and other providers participate in a new community-wide health information system that will help them better monitor and improve care transitions as patients move from one care setting to another. The award is expected to help increase appropriate referrals for cancer screenings, increase access to care for patients with diabetes with telemedicine, and reduce preventable hospitalizations and emergency department visits by 10 percent for conditions that could be better handled in clinical settings, yielding a potential cost savings of $11M per year in the Tulsa area for taxpayers and patients.
Learn More
The GreaterTHAN website - information, documents, recent media coverage, and links
TV interview with Dr. David Kendrick, acting coordinator of GTHAN, about Tulsa's initiative