Activate Care, a national provider of team-based care coordination technology and services, today announced a partnership with the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program (VCHIP), a population-based maternal and child health services research and quality improvement program of the University of Vermont (UVM). VCHIP researchers in the UVM College of Medicine are using the Activate CareHub™ to engage community healthcare providers and multidisciplinary care teams in a federally-funded effort to improve population health management for families with children and youth with special health care needs.
The Activate CareHub™ is a cloud-based and HIPAA-compliant platform that is designed to power team-based care. VCHIP will use the Activate CareHub™ and Secure Messaging to engage medical home teams, social workers, and community specialists in creating and using shared plans of care with families with children and youth with special health care needs.
“Our vision is for every family with children and youth with special health care needs to have an electronic shared plan of care that is family-centered, easy-to-use, and secure,” said Valerie Harder, M.H.S., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UVM and Principal Investigator for VCHIP. “With Activate Care's technology, we are helping community providers and families integrate and more easily manage their systems of care.”
“Like VCHIP, we believe that every medically complex patient should have a care plan that is patient-centered and easy to share,” said Ted Quinn, Activate Care Co-founder and CEO. “This is especially true for the complex pediatric population and their families who too often struggle to keep everyone who is caring for their child on the same page. VCHIP and their community partners have a unique opportunity to knock down barriers within the health care system and transform the way care is delivered to families of children with medical complexity.”
In Vermont and across the country, delivering coordinated care for children and youth with special health care needs is a growing challenge. About one in 25 children born in the United States experiences medical complexity, and the population of these children is increasing at a rate of about 5 percent annually, outpacing the growth rate of children as a whole. Nationally, these children account for roughly 30% of pediatric health costs – $100 billion annually – comprising 55% of all pediatric inpatient and 85% of all pediatric 30-day readmission costs.
This VCHIP project is funded by the Community Health Peer Learning Program, a national peer learning collaborative managed by AcademyHealth through a $2.2 million award from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).
About Activate Care
Activate Care is a digital health company that simplifies complex care for everyone involved. the Activate CareHub™ connects all care team members and drives coordinated action through one cloud-based interoperable platform. Activate Care’s Care Traffic Control™ extends the impact of care teams while supporting patients and preventing system failures. Learn more at http://www.activatecare.com
