Our Accomplishments

Improvement in Physicians’ Practices

Opportunities

One of HSSC’s most significant point-of-care initiatives is HSSC’s establishment of an extension center to help doctors’ offices implement electronic health record systems (EHRs). HSSC received a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support this effort.

According to HSSC clinical advisor Peter Carek, a professor of Family Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, the adoption of EHR systems in physician’s offices in South Carolina will improve care by organizing all patient information in one location; providing healthcare professionals with helpful information, such as diagnostic guidelines or treatment recommendations, while the patient is in the office; providing healthcare providers with prompts for additional steps needed to monitor a patient’s disease or provide preventative care for a specific condition; and allowing physicians to create registries and reports that indicate when patients need additional visits or services.

HSSC is also supporting the development of a statewide health information exchange (HIE). SCHIEx, South Carolina’s HIE, allows healthcare providers across the state to have immediate access to a patient’s medical records no matter where the patient has previously been treated.

Yet another HSSC initiative that will directly improve quality and care in physicians’ practices is a collaborative program called Experience in Quality Improvement for Practice in Primary Care (EQulP PC). The program involves South Carolina Area Health Education Consortium (SC AHEC) affiliated family medicine residency programs and their associated practices. Both faculty and residents are making quality improvement efforts a central part of patient care, with a focus on achieving measurable process and clinical care outcome improvements in the areas of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and prevention services. HSSC initiated the two-year program in 2009 and provides both oversight and funding.

Roughly half of the graduates of SC AHEC residency programs remain in South Carolina to practice medicine, meaning the positive impact of the EQulP PC program on the health and safety of the state’s patients will grow.

Snapshot

Accomplishment Data

Initiative: Organizations: Theme:
  • Engagement
    Advancement
Focus:
  • Clinicians
    Health Care Systems
    Research Organizations
    Researchers