5. Don’t be afraid to raise standards. When it came to meeting NCQA standards and others the community had in place, Bruno said they would continue to “up the threshold” if standards were already met. “If we were at 30 percent, for example, we upped it to 40 percent,” she said. “We have a process called a performance improvement team, and that’s where the leaders of the primary care practices at Beacon come together to review the data; they look at how well they’re doing, and if there is a place they could improve.” Leaders openly share best practices, said Bruno, and help each other reach a higher standard. “If one is doing better than the other, they help. Or if they’re all doing lousy, they would brainstorm and put practices in place and come back and review it again.” 

6. Tailor the technology to your needs. Bruno said the community was fortunate all of the organizations participating were already using EMRs. “We gathered information about the patients in the study group, and we created a forum in the electronic medical record that gathered some of the info that was there. And if it wasn’t there, they could enter it.” This allowed data to be in the same place, said Bruno, which allowed easier reporting back to the Office of the National Coordinator. 

7. Share the love. Bruno said a project that’s in the works focuses on connecting primary care practices to the community’s HIE. “HealthInfoNet, our exchange, had five pilot organizations before the Beacon Community,” she said. “HealthInfoNet focused initially on hospitals because most had some electronic medical record, but what’s in the work plan is to connect the practices from Eastern Maine Medical Center and practices throughout the state.” This will enable physicians to have data from all the EMRs in the Bangor Community hospitals, said Bruno. “The other thing that HealthInfoNet is doing as part of Beacon is developing a care manager view into HealthInfoNet. The goal is to improve the health of these folks with chronic diseases through care management facilitated by health information technology.”

8. Be open and transparent. “I think that one of the big lessons we learned is the value of openness and transparency in collaboration,” said Bruno. “The value of setting up groups where people have a voice.” In addition to the community’s groups focusing on specific projects, Bruno said they have a statewide advisory committee as well. “There’s a broad participation; there’s leadership commitment from all the organizations, and I’m extremely impressed,” added Bruno. “I think a lot of it is because they buy into the goal that we’re improving the health of our community through this care management, facilitated by health information technology. This is fun for them—they like we’re breaking down those silos.”

Follow Michelle McNickle on Twitter @Michelle_writes