Middletown-based Community Health Center Inc. (CHC) is launching a nationwide initiative to advance the training of primary care providers and to implement and improve team-based primary care at health centers.
CHC will engage health centers across the country through interactive training sessions, learning collaboratives and web-based resources, according to a CHC news release. It will provide technical assistance and guidance to more than 1,000 health centers across the U.S. at no cost to participants over the next two years.
More than 20 general webinars, followed by a series of intensive months-long learning collaboratives in which health centers actually implement new programs, will be conducted throughout 2016 and 2017.
The program is funded by a $1 million award from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) National Training and Technical Assistance Cooperative Agreement (NCA) focused on clinical workforce development. CHC said it received the only HRSA award for workforce development.
CHC’s Weitzman Institute will help participants adopt many of its learning programs, including linking primary care providers with expert specialists through Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) videoconferencing consultative sessions, developing interprofessional learning collaboratives among participating health centers, and utilizing the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI’s) Breakthrough Series Collaborative – a collaborative learning model used for training healthcare personnel to improve quality in their organizations.
