Activate Care, a national provider of health collaboration software, today announced a partnership with the Oregon Center for Children & Youth with Special Health Needs (OCCYSHN) based at OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon. OCCYSHN is the state’s public health agency for this population of children with special needs, and as such provides families and clinicians across the state with resources and information to build and support coordinated systems of care.
OCCYSHN has long standing relationships with county public health departments in Oregon to support care coordination for children and families, where public health nurses employed by counties visit families in their homes to assess needs and collect information in the pursuit of care coordination. With the addition of Activate Care, OCCYSHN will equip these nurses with electronic shared plans of care to track a child’s health information, continuously coordinate care amongst families and care team members in the community, and maintain real-time, actionable care plans, accessible to all members of the care team, including parents and families.
To ensure the success of the shared plan of care model, OCCYSHN will launch Activate Care in parallel with an initiative to establish standing care teams in each community. Care teams will include local primary care physicians and pediatricians, practice-based care coordinators, insurance providers, educational venues such as school districts and Head Start programs, as well as other community health resources, including behavioral health, developmental disability services, and family support. Activate Care will connect all members of the standing care teams, serving as a community health collaboration hub that will help to ensure families receive needed care by all stakeholders in their county and in the state of Oregon.
Key to OCCYSHN’s success will be the extent to which they can engage parents and families in the shared plan of care model. They are launching first in select counties with the goal of learning the most effective approach to getting families engaged in shared care plans. Ultimately, they will develop a learning collaborative whereby best practice leaders from early counties can support other programs across the state.
“As we work with OCCYSHN to redesign care for children and youth with special health needs, my hope is that families ultimately will feel more empowered to navigate our extremely complicated healthcare systems,” said Ted Quinn, Activate Care CEO. “By giving families a seat at the table, OCCYSHN is already on an innovative trajectory. We hope to give care teams the tools to deeply engage families in the care planning and care coordination processes, which we know is key to changing the trajectory, especially for families of children with special health care needs.”
About Activate Care®
With Activate Care, everyone - clinicians, patients, families, and community partners - can act together to make health happen, wherever they are. Activate Care’s health collaboration hub promises a better, safer, less expensive, and more flexible approach to managing healthcare’s complex tasks and achieving your goals. Headquartered in Boston, Mass., Activate Care is privately held and venture-funded by the disruptive innovation investment firm, Rose Park Advisors.
