Safety Net West OCHIN’s Practice-based Research Network

As an Agency for Health Research and Quality and a registered Practice-based Research Network, the mission of Safety Net West is to improve the health of underserved populations, enhance quality of care, and inform health policy through research.

Safety Net West operates as an independent business unit within OCHIN for the purpose of encouraging practice-based research that advances understanding of the health of underserved populations, increases health equity, improves quality of care, and informs health policy.

Research conducted in partnership with the Safety Net West clinics relies extensively on data maintained at OCHIN. Safety Net West emphasizes studies that examine effective interventions and delivery system improvements, especially those that focus on:

• Understanding and addressing health conditions with known health disparities that are common in safety net populations
• Improving health outcomes in safety net populations
• Evaluating interventions that have potential to improve safety net practice
• Testing Health IT interventions to improve population health
• Implementing evidence-based practices within the clinic network

The Safety Net West research network is unique among other Practice-based Research Networks because it has no formal affiliation with a particular academic health center and is comprised almost exclusively of federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and rural health centers (RHCs).

As the administrative home to the Safety Net West, OCHIN currently supports a network-wide EHR with one master patient index that currently links 50 safety net organizations in eight states serving upwards of one million unique patients – representing nearly 8 million distinct community health clinic visits annually.

For more information on how you can collaborate with Safety Net West PBRN, please contact us at research@ochin.org