Overview
Health Center Controlled Networks (HCCNs) help health centers improve quality of care and patient safety by using health information technology (HIT) to reduce costs and improve care coordination. They offer specialized training and technical assistance (T/TA) to take advantage of economies of scale, including:
- Group buying power,
- Shared training, and
- Data analytics to support quality measurement and improvement.
The networks work with State and Regional Primary Care Associations (PCAs) and National Training and Technical Assistance Partner award recipients NTTAPs to speed up the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and HIT. Recent efforts have helped health centers adopt integrated care models and use HIT to increase patient engagement. HIT can also be instrumental in achieving value-based care.
Training and technical assistance offered
The networks help participating health centers (at no charge) to:
- Increase patients’ access to their personal health data
- Improve patients’ engagement with their health care team
- Improve HIT usability to minimize provider burden
- Run security risk assessments and develop risk reduction strategies
- Increase the use of national standards to share patient information securely with key partners
- Use both clinical and non-clinical data to improve and coordinate care
- Improve analytics capacity to support value-based care activities
- Use social determinants of health to improve both population and patient health.
More tools
- Search for a HRSA-funded Health Center Controlled Network
- Find support for full optimization of EHR/HIT systems from HRSA’s HITEQ Center
- Learn more about federal coordination of efforts to advance HIT through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
- Find health IT strategies, recommendations and best practices with the ONC’s HIT Playbook