[ORTCCTelehealth-TAO] telehealth and chronic disease mgmt - a study to watch

[Catherine Britain]

Good Morning,

I clipped this from the Federal Telemedicine News.  This should be a very
good study to watch....

 Wednesday, October 22, 2008 AHRQ Funding
Studies<http://telemedicinenews.blogspot.com/2008/10/ahrq-funding-studies.html>
Chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease account for 75% of all
healthcare spending but at the same time managing chronic illnesses can be
fragmented and ineffective. Patients are increasingly being treated for
multiple chronic diseases by many different providers resulting in decreases
in the quality of their care and patients are facing more safety concerns.

Treating chronic care patients can be helped through care coordination,
active follow-up, good self management, clinician decision support, and the
use of information systems. Despite the potential for HIT to help treat
chronic care patients, research to date has often failed to show clear
benefits.

The Department of Family Medicine and Community Medicine at the University
of Missouri-Columbia received funding from AHRQ to study how using several
strategies to implement HIT would help patients with chronic diseases. The
researchers are devising methods that providers can use to compare and
improve their clinical performance against standardized performance targets.

In the study, researchers will provide patients with access to a web-based
interactive software system to help with in-home reconciliation of all
medications. Also, patients will use in-home smart diagnostic devices to
send their data directly to their care team.

A multi-method evaluation of the HIT innovations will be used in the study
including qualitative interviews and surveys. The HIT system involving
chronic disease care at the University of Missouri will not only be studied
but will be implemented differently in various practices and with several
associated care systems.

AHRQ is also supporting chronic care research at the Department of
Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwest Medical Center in Dallas to
specifically help psychiatric settings provide effective care. Depression is
the most common mental health cause for disability and treatments therefore
the treatment needs to take into account the chronic nature of the disorder.

Despite the development of effective treatments, evidence from practice
settings continues to show that inadequate antidepressant medication
treatment is used in terms of doses and duration. The goal is to develop a
computerized decision support system integrated with an electronic health
record to disseminate evidence-based treatment for chronic depression in
large systems of care. This project will be implementing Measurement-Based
Care (MBC) in an ambulatory care setting using an integrated Clinical
Decision Support System (CDSS) and an electronic health record.

The University is collaborating with the Centerstone Community Mental Health
Center a behavioral health services provider located in Tennessee. The
proposed EHR-CDSS facilitating MBC will be instituted in 24 clinics by 50
clinicians to treat approximately 8000 patients with major depressive
disorders.
 Posted by Carolyn Bloch at 4:35
PM<http://telemedicinenews.blogspot.com/2008/10/ahrq-funding-studies.html>
<http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=441213832937362575&postID=3769107250811613136>


-- 
Catherine S. Britain
CSB Consulting
csbritain at gmail.com
541-910-7366
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/tao/attachments/20081023/b338a397/attachment.html>