For the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), NORC, in cooperation with several partners, has led the development of a national resource center (NRC) for AHRQ’s Health Information Technology (health IT) initiative. The AHRQ NRC supports over 100 AHRQ HIT grantees, five State and Regional Demonstration (SRD) projects working towards health information exchange, as well as 33 states and one territory working on a Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration.

The AHRQ NRC is a vital component of the Department of Health and Human Service’s strategy to improve healthcare quality and efficiency through the widespread adoption of health IT. Other programs aligned towards this end include the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), the American Health Information Community (AHIC), and HRSA’s Office of Health Information Technology (OHIT).

The AHRQ NRC serves a unique role in that it is the only federally funded body that provides direct funding for the implementation and evaluation of various forms of health IT, including but not limited to: Electronic Health Records (EHRs), telemedicine, Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), and Health Information Exchange (HIE). Because of its central position as a research clearinghouse for grantees across the nation, the AHRQ NRC can quickly disseminate knowledge and best practices observed by the projects it supports. By way of the AHRQ NRC web site, health providers, administrators, and researchers share lessons learned for how best to improve health care quality, safety, and efficiency in the United States through successful health IT adoption and usage. This knowledge is available to the public in various forms, including informal discussion boards, national teleconferences, peer-reviewed white papers, issue briefs and official reports.  Current key activities of the center include the following:

• Technical Assistance: The Resource Center provides direct technical assistance to health IT grantees in the form of facilitating communication and sharing of ideas among grantees, one-on-one site visits, serving as a repository for best practice assimilation and diffusion of HIT and offering expert HIT support for providers and communities.

• Portfolio Monitoring & Evaluation: As part of an ongoing effort to monitor the status of its grantee portfolio, the Resource Center conducts both qualitative and quantitative evaluations, including a comprehensive annual report that includes statistical analyses, lessons learned, and challenges faced.

• Health IT Toolkit: The Resource Center is currently developing a toolkit which will provide a one-stop knowledge resource for HRSA grantees who are implementing and evaluation health IT.

• E-Prescribing Evaluation: Five pilot projects studying the interoperability of potential e-prescribing standards as well as improvements in outcomes due to are e-prescribing are being evaluated.

• Knowledge Library: The Resource Center maintains a Knowledge Library and on its website as part of an ongoing effort to organize a catalogue of relevant resources to the health IT community. The Knowledge Library contains evidence-based and theoretical content gathered by health IT experts.

• Grantee Communities: In order to facilitate sharing of knowledge and lessons learned across grantees, the Resource Center creates virtual and real settings in which such collaboration can occur. On the Resource Center website, various community portals and discussion boards are available for grantees to communicate with others who are involved in similar projects. In addition, grantee teleconferences occur on a monthly basis, along with annual in-person meetings in Washington, DC attended by all grantees.

• Issue briefs: The NRC publishes monthly Issue Briefs on specific topics of key interest to the health IT community. These Issue Briefs are based on real-life lessons from grantees in the field, and will cover areas such as Chronic Disease Management and Bar-Coded Medication Administration.

Selected Project Partners:

• Indiana University/Regenstrief Institute
• Vanderbilt University
• Brigham and Women's Hospital
• Burness Communications
• BL Seamon Corporation
• Foundation for eHealth Initiative
• Computer Sciences Corporation