Louisiana Advances Health IT Initiatives
New Orleans served as the host for HIMSS13 this year which gave us an opportunity to highlight and see the progress made throughout Louisiana when it comes to healthcare and health IT.
Crescent City Beacon Council
The Crescent City Beacon Council (CCBC) of New Orleans is one of 17 communities chosen to participate in the Beacon Community Grant Program run by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The grants provided $250 million over three years to to the selected communities with unique population and regional context. This past February the CCBC and its partners were awarded the 2013 Innovator Award from Healthcare Informatics for the efforts being taken to transform the healthcare delivery system in the Greater New Orleans area. Dirctor Dr. Anjum Khurshid calls New Orleans a “national model of health, innovation and technology to improve population health outcomes, increase research and create new jobs and economic development for communities.” New Orleans Health Commissioner Dr. Karen DeSalvo said, “one of the things I’m particularly excited about for Beacon going forward is not only the opportunity for our health information platform to be a job creator, to stimulate the economy and innovation in the healthcare space, but also to improve the public’s health more broadly.”
BioDistrict New Orleans
BioDistrict New Orleans is focused on creating and sustaining an economic development engine for the community through globally competitive bioscience and environmental research and development. New Orleans is already being viewed as a community which is benefiting by using a mixture of new facilities, academic & industry collaboration, job training and the technology to create a new model that is based on wellness and prevention over hospital stays. BioDistrict President & CEO McNamara says, “New Orleans is at the forefront of a new age of healthcare that will combine patients, clinicians, institutions and research in a seamless connection. Chronic disease management will be integrated with data analytics improving the time, cost and inefficiencies of the current healthcare system.”
Louisiana Public Health Institute
The Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI), founded in 1997 with the purpose of improving population-level health outcomes is a partner of the Crescent City Beacon Council. They are a part of a growing movement of public health institutes across the country. The LPHI and BioDistrict New Orleans recently signed a MOU highlighting a new partnership designed to promote New Orleans as a hub for healthcare innovation.The healthcare and biosciences industries in New Orleans are estimated to generate 34,000 new or retained jobs and $24 billion in economic activity over the next 20 years.
Louisiana Health Information Technology (LHIT) Resource Center
The LHIT Resource Center serves as the Regional Extension Center for the state of Louisiana. They received $7.8 million in federal grant funds to assist providers in adoption of health it. The LHIT Resource Center is currently assisting more than 1,600 priority primary care and specialty care providers across the state in the adoption and implementation of EHRs to maintain patients’ health information. Hear the HIT Program Manager Nadine Robin talk about the Center’s achievements and their plans to move forward.
Department of Health & Hospitals
The State healthcare initiative of Living Well in Louisiana asks their residents to assess your health, choose your challenge, and follow your fitness. Hear Brad Tritle on his radio show, Engage4Health talk to Lousiana’s CTO Lucas Tramontozzi , Innovation Fellow Zachery Jiwa, and Health IT Coordinator Tyler Carruth discussing Louisiana’s Health IT and patient engagement efforts.