Electronic Health Records

CHCA integrated EHR into its member benefit structure to provide members with needed technology while shielding them from the challenges of vendor relationships, system maintenance, and staff management. In 2005, after five years of successfully supporting an ever-increasing number of members in an integrated electronic practice management system, CHCA and its 100% health-center controlled board included the launch of its EHR project in its strategic plan. This integration followed a rigorous, two-year due diligence process launched to ensure that the best product and vendor partner for the CHCA membership would be selected. 

Supporting this information technology collaboration, which leverages the shared resources of multiple health center systems, reduces the cost of EHR adoption over stand-alone systems. Putting state of the art, evidence-based clinical technology within reach for health centers struggling to meet the cost of providing high-quality health care is central to this Project, and is poised to offer the greatest possible impact on health outcomes for the most vulnerable populations.

CHCA selected GE’s Centricity product, which is CCHIT certified for interoperability and is used by thousands of physicians to manage millions of patient records, making it the most widely used ambulatory care electronic medical record. Centricity does much more than replace a paper chart: it supports clinical decision making. 

Working collaboratively, CHCA and its partner members have successfully garnered mulitple federal grant awards to grow EHR and other health information technology for the network.  These special initiatives include multiple clinical measures to ensure that technology impacts health outcomes today and into the future.