What is Project ECHO?
Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a learning and guided practice model that revolutionizes medical education and exponentially increased workforce capacity to provide best-practice specialty care and reduce health disparities. The heart of the ECHO modelTM is its hub-and-spoke knowledge-sharing networks, led by expert teams (hubs) who use multi-point video conferencing to conduct virtual clinics with community providers (spokes.) In this way, primary care doctors, nurses and other clinicians learn to provide excellent specialty care to patients in their own communities.
People need access to specialty care for their complex health conditions.
There aren't enough specialists to treat everyone who needs care, especially in rural and underserved communities.
ECHO trains primary care clinicians to provide specialty care services. This means more people can get the care they need.
Patients get the right care, in the right place, at the right time. This improves outcomes and reduces costs.
Project ECHO Idaho
Project ECHO was developed at the University of New Mexico. ECHO empowers primary care providers in remote or underserved communities to treat complex chronic diseases with-specialist level expertise. ECHO Idaho will be an educational resource for the state and will strengthen the underserved and rural communities in Idaho.
ECHO Idaho is led by the University of Idaho and WWAMI and supported by Funding Opportunity Number CMS-1G1-14-001 from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.