The Primary Care Health Information Consortium (PCHIC) was formed in September 2005 by the Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS), the Primary Care Development Corporation (PCDC), and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC-DOHMH). The project's mission is "to support the leadership role of NYC community-based primary care providers in their efforts to use health information technology to improve health outcomes, eliminate health disparities, and increase access to health data among traditionally underserved populations." PCHIC's work is focused around advocacy, fund development and the sharing of resources, technical assistance and best practices among its members. Current membership consists of 25 stakeholder organizations operating more than 150 primary care sites in virtually every corner of NYC serving some of our City's neediest communities.
In its first two years, PCHIC's accomplishments included: formation of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) Selection Committee to review EHR systems and recommend four for adoption by its members; participation in successful lobbying for $2 million in City Council funds for "Wave I" of the Health IT Infrastructure Initiative benefiting 12 CHC's; and convening of two member workgroups to formalize PCHIC's organizational structure (Organization & Governance; Budget & Scope of Services).
In the fall of 2007, CHCANYS obtained funding from the Ira W. Decamp Foundation to partially fund a PCHIC Program Director and a fulltime director was hired. Throughout the spring of 2008, PCHIC worked with its members, through site visits, monthly workgroup meetings and two open roundtable discussions, to identify high priority needs and set PCHIC's agenda for the coming year. Priorities converged around 4 areas: infrastructure/hardware needs; fund development; billing; and sharing of best practices/lessons learned.
Two member workgroups were formed and meet regularly to address issues of concern to members. For detailed information on the projects and accomplishments of the Billing Workgroup and Technology Workgroup you may click on the links. Highlights include:
Product development initiatives with EHR vendors;
Technical assistance for improved electronic data exchange with managed care organizations;
Technical assistance to obtain service priority on mission-critical phone lines through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security;
Grant applications to New York State (HEAL 10 – HIT Enabled Patient Centered Medical Home) and the federal government (ARRA [Stimulus] – Regional Health Information Technology Extension Center));
Training classes; and
Efforts are underway to obtain donations of EHR-interfaceable medical devices from manufacturers.
PCHIC is gathering best practices/lessons learned from members for posting on this website.
PCHIC is currently directing a $6 million New York State HEAL 5 Grant on behalf of 9 Brooklyn CHC's to support implementation of EHR's through a Community Health Information Technology Adoption Collaborative (CHITA) with the goal of achieving community-wide health information exchange in a "care coordination zone", the borough of Brooklyn.
In June, 2008, CHCANYS and PCHIC received the good news that several months of advocacy to the City Council resulted in the award of our full request of $2.3 million to finance Health IT infrastructure for the 18 remaining PCHIC members not funded in Wave I, as mentioned above. PCHIC worked with NYC-DOHMH to allocate this funding and complete the purchases.
In June, 2009, we were very pleased to be awarded the final $2.3 million of our multi-year request to fund additional Health IT infrastructure for Wave I and II members. Members will be surveyed for their infrastructure purchase requests.
