Brockton Healthcare Groups Receive $434K Grant to Address Substance Abuse

From Brockton Neighborhood Health Center:

During an event at Brockton Neighborhood Health Center on Tuesday, June 14, MeHI, the Massachusetts eHealth Institute at MassTech, announced $3,038,000 in grants to drive community-level collaboration among healthcare providers using innovative technologies. The grants were made through MeHI’s Connected Communities Implementation Grant program, a statewide effort which seeks to enhance collaboration and communication among healthcare providers within a community through the use of innovative technologies, such as electronic health records and health information exchanges.

MeHI announced awards to seven Massachusetts healthcare organizations working with a total of 78 partner organizations, each receiving grants of $434,000 to support collaborative projects. Each project involves four or more organizations in a specific region, such as hospitals, physician groups, home health agencies, civic and municipal organizations and at least one behavioral health and/or long term and post-acute care organization. Per the terms of the grant program, each project is required to address practical, measurable healthcare needs among the awarded organization’s patient population.

“By using technology to strengthen local ties, these grantees and their collaborators will be better prepared to address the critical healthcare challenges impacting Massachusetts, including combating the opioid crisis, avoiding unnecessary or recurring readmissions, and preventing adverse drug events,” said Laurance Stuntz, MeHI’s director.

The objectives of the Connected Communities Implementation Grant Program are to catalyze inter-organizational collaboration and to advance the use of interoperable electronic health records (“EHRs”) to improve healthcare and reduce healthcare costs. The Connected Communities Program started with a needs assessment, which involved interviews and roundtables with stakeholders in 15 communities across the Commonwealth.  Each community’s needs were captured in Community eHealth Plans and helped shape the goals of the final grant program.

The announcement took place at Brockton Neighborhood Health Center (BNHC), which received a Connected Communities grant for a project focused on coordinating care for patients with substance use disorders across various providers through the adoption of current health information technologies. This project will allow BNHC and its collaborating partners (High Point Treatment Center, Brockton Area Multi-Services, Inc. [BAMSI], Signature Healthcare and Good Samaritan Medical Center) to make positive changes in a region hit hard by the opioid crisis. By streamlining coordination and planning of care among a patient’s providers, no matter where the providers are located, this project will allow better treatment to be delivered to patients battling substance abuse.

“We are collaborating to eliminate gaps in the care continuum for people suffering from opioid and other addictions,” said Sue Joss, CEO of BNHC. “By using technology to enhance communication and referrals across multiple care providers, we will increase access to services for people seeking recovery.”

The Connected Communities program is designed to build upon and complement Commonwealth-supported programs across many state agencies, both those managed by MeHI and by partner state organizations, such as the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Health Policy Commission. Previous programs include MeHI’s HIway Implementation Grant and HIway Vendor Integration Grant programs HPC’s CHART (Community Hospital Acceleration, Revitalization, & Transformation) program, DPH’s Prevention Wellness Trust Fund and the federal Meaningful Use program.

“These projects highlight the strength of the Commonwealth’s healthcare delivery sector,” said Alice Moore, undersecretary of health at EOHHS. “They will help improve how community care is delivered, increase collaboration across healthcare providers, help reduce costs and improve health outcomes and patient experience.”

The Connected Communities program aligns with MeHI’s charge to engage the healthcare community and catalyze the development, adoption and effective use of digital healthcare. In particular, the program supports provider organizations that typically lack access to the necessary resources needed to implement health technology, such as behavioral health and long-term post-acute care organizations. The program provides incentives to assist eligible organizations and their community collaborators in the advanced use of interoperable EHRs to enable access to timely, clinically relevant information to improve two aspects of care coordination: transitions between different settings of care and cross-setting care management among inter-organizational care team members.

The Connected Communities grants are funded via key investments made by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through Chapter 224, the 2012 healthcare cost containment law.