Care Coordination and Health IT

While care coordination is fundamentally a “people centric” enterprise, it is not difficult to see that health information technology (health IT) must play a critical role in this process. Various forms of health IT, such as EHRs, messaging, alert systems, and telemonitoring devices can be useful to deliver and analyze data when and where it is needed to support the care coordination process. The objective of this project was to describe a vision for how health IT can and should support care coordination as well as the qualities and functions necessary to achieve that vision. Over 100 stakeholders were brought together in the creation of a consensus report on care coordination and health IT. These stakeholders represented various perspectives, such as patients, providers, vendors, employers and payers, and how the various components on health IT can radically improve the collaborative efforts of multiple care team actors across the continuum of care. Additionally, a semi-structured protocol was developed to interview leaders from nine Beacon Communities; State Care Coordinated Activities; Hospitals and Community Organizations to identify methods, best practices and the types of technologies employed to facilitate care coordination. The initial findings indicated a unified set of principles that should be incorporated into the implementation of health IT to ensure its effectiveness in supporting care coordination. They were: 1) information should be accessible; 2) technology should facilitate trust; 3) Information should be actionable, timely, and capable of being customized; 4) Technology should support the patient and caregiver relationship; 5) A proactive and personalized plan of care is central to effective care coordination; 6) Successful care coordination requires numerous linkages throughout the healthcare system, as well as to non-health related community support systems; and 7) Technology should create efficiencies in clinical workflow.