MHSN is proud to support the second-annual Telehealth Awareness Week presented by the American Telemedicine Association! Telehealth continues to play a critical role in supporting access to safe, quality healthcare services for diverse communities of patients and providers. Taking place September 18-24, 2022, Telehealth Awareness Week will highlight the value of telehealth in a hybrid care model that includes in-person and virtual care.
To learn more about Telehealth Awareness Week, visit: http://telehealthawareness.org/
Growth
In the past year, MHSN has grown from 11 Federally Qualified Health Centers operating 71 sites across Mississippi and serving over 125,200 patients annually, to 19 community health centers, operating in 152 sites, serving 219,858 unique patients per year. MHSN has successfully used prior HCCN funding to assist its participating health centers (PHCs) to move from a paper-based system to a network-based Health Information Technology platform with electronic health records that feed population health data to MSHSN and incorporate laboratory, pharmacy, and X-ray images into a patient medical record. MSHSN has successfully managed the almost $3M in prior HCCN funds received since 2007 in advancing Mississippi’s Federally Qualified Health Centers health information infrastructure.
Future Work
While the Mississippi Health Safe Net has made significant progress as a change agent for its PHCs in moving toward Meaningful Use, more work is needed to empower and enable them to achieve the National Health IT strategic goals, set for 2020 in four main areas: (1) Health Information Technology and Meaningful Use; (2) Data Quality and Reporting; (3) Health Information Exchange; and (4) Quality Improvement.
