PORTLAND, OR – The Oregon Community Health Information Network (OCHIN), a not-for-profit organization that supports safety-net clinics that serve uninsured and under-insured patients, will continue its West Coast safety net clinic electronic health records implementation through federal grants totaling more than $4 million.

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Health Resources and Services Administration grant will assist with 40 clinic implementations, which represents 47 percent of OCHIN’s project implementation costs over the next three years.

OCHIN licenses, designs and builds integrated software products that support ambulatory healthcare and clinical needs. Its 25 member organizations can afford quality software products and services that might otherwise be out of reach by collaborating and using their collective buying power.

Abby Sears, CEO of OCHIN, says members are not required to pay a fee but they pay for OCHIN’s service, which she says is a fraction of the cost they would have to pay if they were working by themselves.

She says OCHIN provides members with “cheaper, better service (than vendors), and they get to control what we do.”

OCHIN signed a deal with Epic Systems Corp. in 2004 to provide EHRs to clinics in Oregon, California and Washington.

Through a previous grant, the network implemented its first EMR in 2005 at Multnomah County’s North Portland Health Clinic, a federally qualified health center in Oregon.

Vanetta Abdellatif, director of Integrated Clinical Services for Multnomah County Health Department, says Multnomah “immensely benefited from its relationship with OCHIN.” She said otherwise the EMR would not have been financially viable for them.

“We are very fortunate to be a part of it, added Amit Shah, MD, medical director of Multnomah County Health Department.

“OCHIN is an example of how primary care is under a revolution,” he says. “We are trying to reform the safety net clinic. Using an EMR is a revolutionary way to create the medical home and serve the underinsured.”

 “People are always talking about interoperability and we will get there one day, but what we really gained was intra-operability,” said Shah. “We were able to talk to ourselves, to talk to support staff and track things for our patients.”

“It has been really great to have sites connected to each other,” added Abdellatif. “Our providers can have professional sharing that they didn’t have before.”

OCHIN is a designated Organized Health Care Arrangement (OHCA) and shares one set of hardware, which enables all OCHIN clinics to share records across multiple organizations.

Susan Chauvie, chief clinical officer of OCHIN, is working with each organization to determine its clinical strategy as it prepares for its EMR.

“People have a lot of questions and a little bit of anxiety about being ready,” she says. “I work with them to make sure that they feel as close to ready as possible.”   “The real art, I think, is building a relationship and trust and making sure that you use a variety of ways to communicate and invite everyone to be a part of the change that is about to happen – before they are in the middle of it,” she says.