Enhancing care coordination through HIEs, cross-sector business alliances, and tiered community care management

Enhancing care coordination and yielding sustainable population health outcomes through HIEs depends upon cross-sector business alliances and a tiered community care management strategy.

This session presents the community care management strategy and practice of the North Colorado Health Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated in 2002. The Alliance, based in the town of Evans in Colorado’s Weld County on the high eastern plains within sight of the Rockies, is a creative and strategic collaboration of partner organizations who recognize that community health does not begin or end with medical, dental, and behavioral health services. By integrating these services, assuming shared responsibility for providing care for the entire population within our geographic area, and engaging in mobile outreach, Alliance partners have able to go far towards reaching the goal of one hundred percent access to care, even for the underserved.

The continuously evolving Alliance HIE has greatly enhanced care coordination efforts for the past decade. The value of the HIE to care coordination has been determined by the strengths and weaknesses of local business alliance, the state of technology for cross-sector information exchange, and a tiered strategy for engaging individuals and community partners in addressing features of the built environment and the specific local array of non-medical determinants that make it harder for many in our region to resist chronic illnesses and poverty.