Promise CHC awarded $45,361 grant for health IT enhancements

SIOUX CENTER – Promise Community Health Center in Sioux Center has been awarded a $45,361 grant for health information technology enhancements.

The grant was awarded through the Delivery System Health Information Investment program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Karen Sanchez, optometry/medical assistant for
Promise Community Health Center in Sioux Center,
enters information into the computer. Promise has
been awarded a $45,361 federal grant for health
information technology enhancements.

The funds will be used toward the purchase of equipment and supplies to upgrade an aging server and technology infrastructure to support the expansion of integrated services and the transition to value-based care. The project also involves the purchase of equipment and software for the implementation of telehealth services.

“This grant helps us keep pace with the delivery of health care in an integrated and fast-paced environment,” said Nancy Dykstra, executive director of Promise. “Health care continues to move forward and requires state-of-the-art delivery systems. This is a way for us to ensure that we have the equipment and capacity necessary.”

More than $87 million was awarded through the grant program to 1,310 health centers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Pacific Basin. Iowa’s 14 community health centers were awarded $838,044.

Registered nurse Kari Ney uses her
laptop computer in the prenatal
wing at Promise Community Health
Center. Promise has been awarded
a $45,361 grant to enhance health
information technology systems.

The grant program’s purpose is to provide one-time support for health information technology enhancements that accelerate health centers’ transition to value-based models of care, improve efforts to share and use information to support better health decisions for patients, and increase engagement in delivery system transformation. It was the first significant investment directly awarded to health centers to support the purchase of health information technology since 2009.

“Health centers across the country are instrumental in providing high-quality, comprehensive primary care to millions of people,” said HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell. “This investment will help unlock health-care data and put it to work, improving health outcomes and building a better health-care system for the American people.”

Dykstra said the grant will give Promise the technological capacity to continue to be competitive and on the frontline of delivering care. She noted that health care is making a significant paradigm shift from volume-based care to value-based care, which requires health-care facilities to demonstrate that what they’re doing and how they’re doing it is quality care for the patient.

“You can have high-quality practitioners, but if you don’t have this kind of infrastructure in place, you can’t do it anymore,” she said. “You have to have the technology in your systems or your practitioners are without the tools they need and we’re without the infrastructure we need to deliver that kind of integrated and high-level care. That’s really what the grant is intended to do.”

The grant also will give Promise and other community health centers across Iowa the ability to implement telehealth services to connect patients directly with specialists through University of Iowa Health Care. That will allow Promise to be able to care for patients who otherwise might have been referred elsewhere to specialists.

“What these specialties might be still is being looked at,” Dykstra said.

Promise Community Health Center of Sioux Center is the only Federally Qualified Health Center serving the far northwest corner of Iowa. Promise provides medical, prenatal, dental, vision and behavioral health services. To learn more, visit www.promisechc.org and watch this video.