The GE Foundation www.gefoundation.com just announced a three year $14 million grant to support Project ECHO http://echo.unm.edu. Project ECHO treats chronic complex conditions in local communities by expanding the skill sets of the providers who are already there.
The GE foundation’s funding will help to increase the number of U.S. Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) participating in Project ECHO nationwide and will link community providers with specialist care teams at academic medical centers to help manage complex specialty care.
Project ECHO will partner with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to design and implement a quality improvement ECHO program to help FQHCs improve effectiveness and efficiency.
Project ECHO launched in 2003 at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center http://hsc.unm.edu focusing on treating hepatitis C, has grown significantly across numerous other health conditions.
An evaluation of the ECHO model published in the “New England Journal of Medicine” found that hepatitis C care provided by ECHO trained community clinicians was as good as care provided by university specialists. The study also showed that the ECHO model can reduce and even eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in treatment outcomes.
In the U.S., dozens of academic medical centers operate teleECHO clinics that address more than 40 health conditions. Using basic videoconferencing technology, they are able to participate in weekly teleECHO clinics, where primary care providers from multiple sites present patient cases and work with a multi-disciplinary team of experts to determine treatments.
Globally teleECHO clinics are running in ten countries. In addition, the Veterans Administration has its own version of Project ECHO plus the Department of Defense has a global ECHO chronic pain management program.
Dr. Sanjeev Arora, the liver disease specialist and social innovator who created Project ECHO, said, “The support from the GE Foundation will help make access to high quality specialty care a reality for people in rural and underserved communities.”