The 17 Beacon Communities have compiled and synthesized their lessons learned from building health IT infrastructure, driving population health improvement, and testing innovative approaches during the three year program. This information has been developed into six Learning Guides1 offering proven strategies and actionable information that can be adapted by other communities –hospitals, health systems, individual practices, and community organizations– advancing community level health care transformation using health IT.
The Guides include:
- Key foundational elements to support successful planning and implementation
- Strategic and implementation objectives with execution tactics and case studies
- Resources used by Beacon Communities such as process maps and sample documents
About Learning Guides [PDF - 234 KB]
Learning Guide 1: Improving Hospital Transitions and Care Coordination Using Automated Admission, Discharge and Transfer Alerts [PDF - 2.1 MB]
Download Executive Summary [PDF - 339 KB]
This Learning Guide distills the experiences and lessons learned from several Beacon Communities in developing automated admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) alerting programs as they set goals, planned for implementation, constructed a technical approach, and coached practices on effective work flow redesign to accommodate and use the new alerts to improve patient care. This Guide is designed for communities and learning collaborative organizers that have identified the implementation of ADT-based alerts as a potential strategy to achieve their goal of reducing avoidable ED visits, avoidable hospitalizations, and preventable readmissions.
Learning Guide 2: Strengthening Care Management with Health Information Technology [PDF - 2.3 MB]
Download Executive Summary [PDF - 361 KB]
This Learning Guide distills the experiences and lessons learned from several Beacon Communities investing in health IT to support care management services as they set goals, selected appropriate tools, identified the necessary data elements, supported practices through implementation, and engaged patients in their health. This Guide is designed for communities and learning collaborative organizers that are interested in using health IT to support the integrated and comprehensive delivery of care management services to patients with chronic illness.
Learning Guide 3: Capturing High Quality Electronic Health Records Data to Support Performance Improvement [PDF - 2.3 MB]
Download Executive Summary [PDF - 344 KB]
This Learning Guide distills the experiences and lessons learned from several Beacon Communities investing in assessing and addressing the quality of data within their EHR systems as they engaged provider and physician champions, conducted data mapping for selected measures, assessed and improved the quality of data in their EHRs, and established ongoing processes to monitor and address ongoing data quality issues. This Guide is designed for health care providers and learning collaborative organizers who will rely upon EHR data to support performance improvement and new payment models.
Learning Guide 4: Enabling Health Information Exchange to Support Community Goals [PDF - 2.1 MB]
Download Executive Summary [PDF - 344 KB]
This Learning Guide distills the experiences and lessons learned from several Beacon Communities strengthening existing technical infrastructure or implemented new infrastructure as needed to connect disparate providers and share critical Electronic Health Record data for the purpose of improving patient care and community health to as they convened stakeholders, assessed the landscape, created a legal framework for information sharing, developed a technical path forward, and agreed upon metrics to track usage and impact. This Guide is designed for communities and learning collaborative organizers that are interested in using data exchange capabilities to support important goals such as care coordination, care management, quality improvement and aligning payment incentives with value of health care services.
Learning Guide 5: Driving Clinical Transformation in a Practice Setting with Health Information Technology [PDF - 4.1 MB]
Download Executive Summary [PDF - 344 KB]
This Learning Guide distills the experiences and lessons learned from several Beacon Communities focusing on IT-enabled clinical transformation and performance improvement as they engaged practices, assessed readiness, considered practice transformation models, and collaborated on the effective deployment and use of health IT in their communities. The Learning Guide is designed for individual practices, communities, and learning collaborative organizers that are interested in using health IT enabled transformation models to improve practice performance and care management.
Learning Guide 6: Building Technology Capabilities for Population Health Measurement at the Community Level [PDF - 2 MB]
Download Executive Summary [PDF - 292 KB]
This Learning Guide distills the experiences and lessons learned from several Beacon Communities investing in new technology capabilities to enable clinical data aggregation and population health measurement as they confirmed their goals, engaged community partners, invested in a technology infrastructure, and developed a strong foundation for measuring and improving the health of various populations of patients. This Guide is designed for communities and learning collaborative organizers that are interested in aggregating and analyzing data from multiple sources and using that information to improve the delivery of health care populations of patients.
- The Learning Guides are a product of the Beacon Nation Project funded by the Hawai’i Island Beacon Community, an awardee of the ONC Beacon Community Program