History of OCHIN

In 2000, OCHIN applied for and was awarded a Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) Community Access Program (CAP) grant with the expressed purpose of sustaining the viability of the healthcare safety net in Oregon by improving support for the information infrastructure at and among safety-net clinics. After an extensive review process, Epic Systems Corporation was chosen as a strategic partner in the initiative, and its practice management suite of applications was selected for implementation in the initial phase of the project.

Epic was chosen as a strategic partner both for the quality of its products and for its willingness and commitment to work with OCHIN to customize its products to meet the specific and unique needs of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and other providers caring for indigent, uninsured, and underinsured populations. Customizations to the Epic products were identified (including UDS reports, sliding fee scales, and other community health center [CHC] specific customizations) and the system and network design was developed and implemented. In July 2002 OCHIN succeeded with its initial rollout of the practice management suite at Clackamas County Health Department.

In December 2002, the network expanded to include our first out-of-state site, the Pike Market Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. By October 2003, 10 additional organizations had gone live throughout the state of Oregon on a scalable, secure, high-speed, private data network designed and maintained by OCHIN staff.

OCHIN supports Epic's practice management suite at the 35 clinics of the Multnomah County Health Department in the Portland metropolitan area and at clinics located in Oregon City, Sandy, Molalla, Cornelius, Beaverton, Hillsboro, McMinnville, Bend, Prineville, Madras, Tillamook, Rockaway, Corvallis, Springfield, and Klamath Falls. The clinics we support cover a geographic area from urban centers in the Portland metropolitan area to rural areas of Southern Oregon, the Oregon Coast, and Central Oregon. We also have implemented practice management in three California FQHCs in Santa Cruz County - La Salud, Santa Cruz County Health, and Santa Cruz Women's Health Center. We currently provide support to 4,600 users at over 100 sites serving over 375,000 clients with over 850,000 annual visits.

Previous CAP grant funds have enabled us to create an integrated practice management solution for participating collaborative members. We have purchased central database, communications, and reporting servers, and now centrally manage those servers on behalf of the collaborative. We have purchased Epic's practice management software, which runs from a single, central database used by all practice management members. We have designed and built a secure, reliable, high-speed private network for delivering practice management, medical, dental, and soon, mental health services to clinics throughout the West coast. These activities are now supported through the fees paid by participating members.

Effective September 2003, OCHIN was awarded two Integrated Services Development Initiative (ISDI) grants and a Shared Integrated Management Information Systems (SIMIS) grant that will enable us to expand our network, further integrate our information systems operations, and implement an electronic health record for our member organizations. OCHIN was originally housed at CareOregon. After receiving 2 million dollars for capitalization by its partners and founders, OCHIN spun off from CareOregon in October 2003, as an independent not-for-profit corporation.

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