California Healthcare Foundation news from FierceHealthIT

> A new report from the California HealthCare foundation suggests that community and public health clinics should work together to implement EMRs. Read more...

On the one hand, California physicians are clearly on the cutting edge when it comes to EMR adoption. On the other, if this is leadership, we've still got a long way to go. According to a new report Read more...

The Santa Barbara County (Calif.) Care Data Exchange has closed, brought down by a mix of funding issues and privacy concerns. The Exchange, which was perhaps the oldest RHIO in the country, was launched in 1998 with $10 million in funding from the California Healthcare Foundation. While Exchange members had figured out how to share information securely, the organizations involved were still concerned about their legal liability in the event that the data fell into the wrong hands, …

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Over the next 18 months, researchers will conduct a new, ambitious effort aimed at helping consumers use IT to manage their health. Participants in the Project HealthDesign initiative, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and California HealthCare Foundation, will develop tools intended to improve the PHR model. Unlike other PHR development efforts, which often create technical silos of their own, the grant teams are designing applications that can be built upon a common …

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A group of California-based foundation executives expect to turn their regional health information network software into an open-source product by early 2007, in hopes that they'll help foster RHIO development nationwide. Officials at the California HealthCare Foundation had spent $20 million to build the software running the Santa Barbara County Data Exchange. Foundation officials, who spoke at a Washington, DC-area health information conference this week, said it would cost around …

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Chronic disease management systems (CDMS) focus specifically on managing chronic disease and preventive care, while the more comprehensive electronic medical record (EMR) documents the entire patient encounter and provides real-time patient information. But how do you make either one work for you? Help is on the way. An excellent new report from the California HealthCare Foundation reveals surprising strengths and weaknesses with both systems. Example: CDMSs rate highly for functionality, …

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