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ick Links Bangor Beacon Organization M.Michelle Hood, FACHE
EMHS, President and CEO
Bangor Beacon Community
Statewide Advisory Committee
Chair
Erik Steele, DO
EMHS, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer
Bangor Beacon Community Principal Investigator
Leadership Catherine Bruno, FACHE Bangor Beacon Community Executive Sponsor EMHS, Chief Information Officer Lead
Dale Hamilton Executive Director, Community Health and Counseling Services Alternate
Clincial Transformation
Jim Raczek, MD
EMMC, Chief Medical Officer Lead
Robert Allen, MD
Penobscot Community Health Center, Executive Medical Director
Alternate Evaluation Barbara Sorondo, MD EMMC, Director Clinical Research Center Lead
Frank Bragg, MD
EMMC, Family Practice Provider
Alternate Meaningful Use Dev Culver HealthInfoNet, CEO Lead
Bob Kohl
Maine Primary Care Association HIT Project Director
Alternate
Sustainability
Mike Donahue, MBA
EMMC, Vice President, Physician Practices
Lead
Donald Krause, MD
St. Joseph Healthcare
Internal Medicine
Alternate
Bangor Beacon Staff
Mac Hilton Program Manager
Debra Carpenter-Zeman Project Manager
Andrea Littlefield
Senior Communications and Outreach Specialist
Lanie Abbott
Senior Communications and Outreach Specialist
Julie Adams
Administrative Assistant |
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Stay up to date with the Bangor Beacon Community! |
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David Prescott, PhD, director of the AWARE program at The Acadia Hospital is blogging
Would you rather live 78 years or 53?
Seventy-seven and nine tenths years - that is the average life expectancy in the United States today according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unless you have a major mental illness. In that case, your average life expectancy is closer to 53 years. When you do the math, that's a reduction in life expectancy of 25 years.
The discrepancy in life expectancy for people with mental illness is the driving force behind including mental health treatment agencies in the Bangor Beacon Community.
Read the rest... |
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Cathy Bruno, EMHS CIO and executive sponsor of the Bangor Beacon Community grant shared our story with the nation during the one year celebration of the grant in Washington, DC.
Click here to watch! |
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Recently, Sandra Wardwell, NP, at Penobscot Community Health Care, was a guest on WVOM's Senior Talk. She did an amazing job sharing our mission and encouraging participation.
Click to listen...
Tom Lynn, LCSW, at CHCS, along with David Prescott, PhD, at The Acadia Hospital, were featured guests at the latest Care Manager Forum held at PCHC. The two were requested by the nurses to discuss how to better intergrate mental and behavoiral health into primary care practices.
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Greetings!
We definitely had our share of cloudy days and rain during the month of May, but the Bangor Beacon Community experienced many days of sunshine with news from our patients that they are feeling better than they have in years.
Our care managers are working with more than 800 patients and HealthInfoNet is busy connecting St Joseph Hospital to the statewide exchange. By early summer both our local hositals will be be able share information, a very exciting time for our patients and the people working hard behind the scenes to improve efficiency, increase patient satisfaction, and safety.
So, while the weather isn't ideal we have many things to be thankful for in our community.
Regards,
Lanie Abbott
Senior Communications and Outreach Specialist |
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Back to Making Greeting Cards |
Her hobby is intricate, time consuming, and requires a great deal of patience and Sue Ross could not be happier about creating her greeting cards again. "When I wasn't feeling well, I just could not sit down and concentrate on making my cards, but now I can sit for hours and create them," smiles Sue.
Sue's health problems began in the late 80s after being diagnosed with diabetes, then she developed asthma, and most recently was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. "Over time, my health just kept getting worse. I ending up being admitted to the hospital month after month - it started to take the zest out of my life." Sue was always very active raising sheep, growing strawberries, taking long walks with her sister, playing with her grandchildren, and doing crafts, but her health problems were keeping her inside stuck on the couch.
When Kathleen Bates, RN, care manager at Husson Family Medicine, asked Sue to participate in the Bangor Beacon Community project, Sue thought, "What did I have to lose?" Now she could not be happier she decided to take part in the project. "When I first started working with Sue back in July of 2010, it was primarily to help her control her diabetes," explains Kathleen. For more than a decade, Sue's blood sugar levels were all over the place causing many health problems. Kathleen's goal was to support Sue while she learnied to take back control of her life. In just seven months, Sue was able to get her average blood sugar down by nearly 100 points. "It takes a lot of work to bring your numbers down, but by getting her blood sugar readings every two weeks, her provider could adjust her medications," smiles Kathleen. That is one of the benefits of care management that Sue truly appreciates, the almost instantaneous relationship with her doctor and nurse. "If something is going on, I call Kathleen and sometimes within minutes I get a call back - it's wonderful."
This summer if you want to catch Sue, you better be quick. With her improved health, she has many plans. "I'm going to play with my grandchildren and take a trip to Missouri with my husband to spend time with his family, a trip I haven't made in a few years because my health was so unstable." Sue is going to continue her passion of creating one of a kind greeting cards, she sells them at the little store in Frankfort just down the road from her home.
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Sharing Milestones and
Looking to the Future |
The feverish pace and outstanding work being done by all our Bangor Beacon Community partners was highlighted at the quarterly CEO meeting in May. An update was provided about each Community of Practice which includes Leadership and Governance, Sustainability, Clinical Transformation, HIT and Meaningful Use, and Data and Performance Measurement.
There is only a short time left to enroll less than 700 patients into our study and Michelle Hood, president and CEO of EMHS, suggested to the group that we invite participation to members of our boards as well as to the employees at each organization.
On the topic of our state's health exchange, Jim Raczek, MD, chief medical officer at Eastern Maine Medical Center, asked if there was a way that physicians could work directly with patients who opt out of HealtlhInfonet. Dev Culver, CEO of HealthInfoNet, reported that physicians, by the nature of the exchange, would know if their patients were not on the exchange. "This is one of our challenges - educating consumers that by not sharing their health information, they are creating a barrier to receiving the best care," shares Dev.
"Bangor Beacon's foundation of collaboration could work in our favor," according to Ken Schmidt, CEO of Penobscot Community Health Center. Ken proposed that we, as a community, pursue other opportunities to further the work we are doing in the areas of community transformation, transitions of care that include nursing home patients, and with clinical pharmacy. The group agreed these initiatives further the mission of Bangor Beacon, which is improve health and prevent hospital admissions.
The next CEO meeting is scheduled for September.
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Increasing Awareness and
Encouraging Participation
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Spreading the word about the Bangor Beacon Community received a boost in May. Hundreds of people in our area saw some of the faces of our Bangor Beacon patients and learned more about what we are doing. We participated in the annual Senior Expo in Bangor. Jennifer Violette, project coordinator at Eastern Maine Medical Center's Clinical Research Center, along with several other staff, spent a Friday talking with folks about the Bangor Beacon Community's mission to improve healthcare. While many attendees at the Expo said they had heard of our project, many others were encouraged that our local healthcare providers were working together towards seamless care.
Neil Eastbrooke (pictured above) was one of nearly two dozen attendees who suffer from one of the four chronic diseases we are studying and signed up to participate. |
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The 411 on HIN | |
What is HealthInfoNet? If you follow the work of the Bangor Beacon Community, you've probably heard us mention HealthInfoNet or the health information exchange. HealthInfoNet is a Maine-based, independent, nonprofit organization using health information technology to improve the health of Maine people. Its primary activity is operating Maine's statewide health information exchange, a secure computer system for doctors and other healthcare providers to share important patient health information. The system is the backbone of the Bangor Beacon Community, linking the community's healthcare providers together to help better coordinate care while putting the patient at the center.
What does the health information exchange (HIE) do for providers and their patients? The HIE combines information from separate healthcare sites to create a single electronic patient health record, and gives a patient's healthcare providers access to that record while caring for them. This record includes things like a patient's known allergies, any recent prescriptions, lab and test results, image reports, and health problems or conditions, collected from across all of a patient's participating providers. Giving quick access to this important medical information, helps healthcare providers make more informed decisions about their patients' care, especially during an emergency.
In addition to reducing paperwork and hassle, it also may reduce medical mistakes, improve patients' health, and lower overall healthcare costs. The system also helps track the spread of disease by quickly reporting certain illnesses and conditions (like Lyme disease or food poisoning), to public health experts at the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
How is this computer system kept secure? While medical records have always been shared through fax, email, or mail, the HIE makes it easier, faster, and more secure. HealthInfoNet follows the highest information security standards available to protect information contained in the HIE. Information is exchanged over a private computer network so that patient information cannot be obtained through general access to the Internet. Only approved healthcare providers, with proper identification and passwords, can access the system. The system keeps track of who accesses it and what files they access.
So how does a patient participate? Patients don't have to do anything to have their information included in this secure system. It is included automatically when they visit a participating provider. For patients who do not choose to participate, HealthInfoNet makes it easy. If a patient chooses to opt-out, they can call HealthInfoNet during business hours at 207-541-9250, fill out the opt-out form available at their provider's office, or complete the same form securely online at www.hinfonet.org/optout.html.
(Pictured above is Dev Culver, CEO of HealthInfoNet, and care managers from throughout the Bangor Beacon communities working together to make sure HIN has a user friendly tool.)
For more information, visit www.hinfonet.org. |
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The 12 Bangor Beacon Community partners:
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