Marlene Moranino
Director of Clinical Programs

CHCACT was excited to host its first live Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) session last Friday. The focus of this session was to perform a Technical Check for CHCACT’s new Chronic Pain & Addictions ECHO; all participants were given the opportunity to log in via the ZOOM platform at their respective health centers to practice and evaluate the technology in anticipation of the first curriculum session on 8/17/18.

Project ECHO, developed by the University of New Mexico, is “a lifelong learning and guided practice model that revolutionizes medical education and exponentially increases workforce capacity to provide best practice specialty care and reduce health disparities through its hub-and-spoke knowledge sharing networks.”

CHCACT is the first organization of its kind in the world to offer a Project ECHO. The Chronic Pain & Addictions ECHO sessions will take place twice a month. Each session will include a didactic curriculum developed by our specialist panel, as well as deidentified case presentations by health center participants. These case presentations are critically important for knowledge building and sharing. The goal is to present cases that involve common clinical scenarios as well as difficult, complex, or challenging presentations to support health center providers in their everyday clinical practices. CHCACT’s Project ECHO specialist panel includes Dr. Surita Rao, MD; Dr. Kyounghae Kim, RN, PhD, NP-C; and, Kevin Chamberlin, PharmD – all from UConn.

Fifty Connecticut health center staff and providers are expected to participate. Benefits of participating include:

• Benefit from the collective expertise of multi-disciplinary specialists, including experts trained in addiction psychiatry and chronic pain management, as well as the experiences of other practitioners who provide direct patient care.
• Build confidence in caring for complex patients and enable some treatment to be provided at the health center level. May prevent or delay the need for specialist referrals keeping the patient in the medical home.
• Join a supportive network of peers (or “community of practice”).
• Learn best practice guidelines.
• Receive AMA Category One CMEs credits at no cost through CHCACT.

Our Friday Technical check simulated a typical ECHO session and was a great success with a representative from all participating health centers present. We experienced a few minor glitches that we were able to identify and correct prior to our first curriculum presentation on 8/17/18.

With the opioid epidemic affecting primary care and health centers with many complex issues, CHCACT is very excited to offer this format of learning, collaboration, and support to our health centers. If you are interested in learning more, contact me!

Marlene