Primary Care Extension Program



The Oklahoma Physicians Resource / Research Network (OKPRN) played a pivotal role in the development of and legislative support for the Primary Care Extension Program (PCEP). Section 455 of the Health Care Bill of 2010 includes language that has been conceived and perfected in OKPRN over the first decade of the 21st Century.

 

Envisioning the two effective and feasible models for successful and sustainable healthcare transformations (integrated care delivery systems and strategic local community-level partnerships), Dr. James Mold, director of OKPRN, persistently argued for the development of a national primary care extension infrastructure that will facilitate the generation and dissemination of relevant, practice-based, clinical knowledge that improves the quality and safety of care and ultimately achieves better outcomes for all. This kind of insfrastructure has never been available in the United States. As a consequence, there has been a tremendous gap between research and translation of research findings into practice. More information about PCEP and its planned implementation can be found in the documents below:

 

PCEP in the Health Care Bill (Section455)

 

PCEP: Transforming Primary Healthcare

 

Primary Care Extension in Oklahoma: An Evidence-Based Approach to Dissemination and Implementation (IMPaCT Project)

 

The purpose of this project is to develop a county-based health improvement infrastructure that will help primary care practices become patient-centered medical homes and to improve the health of Oklahomans and provide assistance to three other States, helping them to create similar infrastructures. Click HERE to read the AHRQ announcement about the IMPaCT Grant.

 

The Oklahoma Extension Program (2013)

 

More information from the funder (AHRQ) is avaiable on the national IMPaCT website.

 

 

The Healthy Hearts for Oklahoma (H2O) Project

 

H2O is part of the national EvidenceNOW project, which is an initiative of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to transform health care delivery by building a critical infrastructure to help smaller primary care practices improve the heart health of their patients by applying the latest medical research and tools.

 

EvidenceNOW established seven regional cooperatives composed of public and private health partnerships that provide a variety of quality improvement services typically not available to small primary care practices. The goal of this initiative is to ensure that primary care practices have the evidence they need to help their patients adopt the ABCS of cardiovascular disease prevention.

 

ABCS' include: Aspirin in high-risk individuals, Blood pressure control, Cholesterol management, and Smoking cessation. The initiative also includes an independent national evaluation designed to determine if and how quality improvement support can accelerate the dissemination and implementation of new evidence in primary care.

 

Specific Aims of H2O:

 

1. Construct an effective, sustainable Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Improvement Center (OPHIC) that can serve as a resource to the emerging Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Extension System (OPHES), supporting dissemination and implementation of patient-centered outcomes research findings into practices.

2. Provide technical support to over 250 primary care practices to help them implement patient-centered outcomes research-based methods to improve their management of patients at risk for CVD events, especially methods such as smoking cessation, blood pressure control, statins, and low-dose aspirin.

3. Evaluate the impact of the intervention’s support strategy and of contextual factors, such as practice characteristics, on practice performanceand outcomes.