June 30th brought the end the first year of CRHC’s funding through the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s (CDPHE Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease and Pulmonary Disease Grant Program (CCPD) supporting CRHC’s Improving Communication and Readmission (iCARE) program.
With this funding, the Colorado Rural Health Center implemented the iCARE Rural Diabetes Collaborative by partnering with the Southeastern Colorado Area health Education Center (SECAHEC) to employ a number of direct delivery and indirect delivery strategies tailored to improve diabetes outcomes in rural Colorado. The iCARE project supports an increase in access of self-management programs and education, improvement in use of disease registries and electronic health records (EHRs) to track data, identify high-risk individuals, and implementation of referral systems to enhance systems for early detection.
Twelve Critical Access Hospitals and their provider based clinics participated in the first year of iCARE Rural Diabetes Collaborative project representing all parts of the state from the Eastern Plains to the Western Slope. During the first year CRHC conducted process mappings at each of the participating provider based clinics to help improve quality outcomes for their diabetic patients. Monthly webinars were held to examine quality data and provide quality improvement education. CRHC and the SECAHEC provided technical assistance and each participating clinic was provided A Personal Guide to Better Health: Managing Your Type 2 Diabetes (©The Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation and Krames StayWell) to gauge a patient’s understanding and provide education surrounding self-management techniques for their type two diabetes.
The second year of the iCARE Rural Diabetes Collaborative will bring process mapping to the provider based clinics again as well as an expansion of the Chronic Disease Self-Management Workshops. CRHC and the SECAHEC will continue to provide clinics and hospitals with provider and patient resources for diabetes, hypertension and cholesterol management and partner with local public health for community diabetes education sessions.
CRHC started iCARE in 2010. The program works with Colorado’s CAHs and their provider-based clinics on three overarching goals: improving communication in transitions of care; reducing readmission rates; and improving clinical processes that contribute to readmissions.
