PIHN Helps Rural Populations

Partners in Health Network (PIHN) https://www.pihn.org provides essential health services to rural healthcare providers and organizations in central and southern West Virginia. PHIN was formed in 1995 to address the health needs in the state and has helped develop a rational and logical approach to delivering health services in the state.

The tool “CAPGate” https://pihn.org/programs, a Care Management database available from PIHN, is a new tool to be used by primary care centers, rural health clinics, and hospitals. CAPGate enables caregivers to enter and track patient data and provides connections to local hospitals to find out activity at the hospitals in real time.

This information can help to identify people who frequent hospital emergency rooms and then make it possible to report to primary care providers if there is a hospital admission or discharge involving one of their patients. Community Health Centers and FQHCs are often using CAPGate to create reports, data graphs, and charts.

CAPGate allows hospitals to enter patients’ inpatient data, and provides a higher level of care coordination. It is essential that providers using the system must be able to enter patient data into their EHR system so interoperability is achieved. CAPGate operating as a fee-based service with multiple facilities in several states, now includes non-PHIN members using the tool.

In addition, the “Appalachian Pulmonary Health Project” (APHP) https://pihn.org/pulmonary under the direction of PIHN, receives financial support from the Dorney-Koppel Family Foundation. This project was started since Grace Anne Dorney suffered from chronic lung disease and was able to receive pulmonary rehabilitation which enabled her to regain her health.

The APHP was formed to help others in rural areas such as in rural Appalachia receive lung disease pulmonary care and rehabilitation. Grace Anne Dorney and her husband television anchorman Ted Koppel, have used financial resources of the Foundation to establish pulmonary rehabilitation programs in areas of high need. Now under the direction of PIHN, the program has spread to ten clinics and hospitals in West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina.