The California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) website articulates the thoughts of many safety net health care leaders: "Information technology is still fairly new and untested in health care, making experimentation, analysis and evaluation critically important".
CHCF.org offers web-based resources for health care safety-net leaders looking to learn more about health information technology (HIT). CHCF regularly conducts research and commissions surveys and reports on emerging technology trends and related policy and regulatory issues and the results are available electronically on CHF.org.
Here are some the recent publications available from CHCF.org:
Chart Abstraction: EHR Deployment Techniques
March 2010: Entering clinical data from paper files into electronic health records (EHRs) causes a temporary loss in clinic productivity. In this issue brief, networks of community clinics share insights about effective chart abstraction.
Speeding Adoption of Electronic Health Records in Community Clinics
January 2010: Seven grantees representing four models of EHR deployment were funded to accelerate the adoption of EHRs in the safety net. CHCF is publishing a series of issue briefs to highlight lessons learned.
Telepsychiatry in the Emergency Department: Overview and Case Studies
December 2009: Telepsychiatry is used in some emergency departments to make the process of evaluating and treating patients with mental health issues more efficient. This paper examines seven ED telepsychiatry programs in terms of structure, financing, and challenges.
Creating EHR Networks in the Safety Net
April 2008: This issue brief explores the network approach to the implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) and its potential to increase EHR adoption rates among California's community clinics and health centers.
Electronic Health Records versus Chronic Disease Management Systems: A Quick Comparison
March 2008: This fact sheet compares the key features of these essential health IT systems and examines the pros and cons of different approaches for a new implementation. A video discusses disease registry tools.