Practice Management - LAFP | Louisiana Academy of Family Physicians

E-Louisiana HIT Toolkit

The Louisiana Academy of Family Physicians (LAFP) and the LHIT Resource Center (LHIT) worked together to develop a comprehensive toolkit to help guide physicians through the process of adopting an electronic health record (EHR) and achieving Meaningful Use. The E-Louisiana HIT Toolkit is available to all members of the LAFP and LHIT courtesy of a grant awarded by the Physicians Foundation.

The purpose of the toolkit is to simplify the process and guide physicians through the adoption of an EHR system for use in their clinical practice. Inside the E-Louisiana HIT Toolkit you will discover qualification and assessment wizards, guidance on working with the LHIT, tips on vendor selection and useful interactive worksheets to help guide you through EHR from inception to implementation.

Using an EHR assessment designed by DOQ-IT, we have developed an interactive EHR Toolkit Preparedness Assessment to help measure levels of preparedness and guide your practice through the Toolkit. The assessment is available in Microsoft Excel and is unprotected so clinical practices can make notes and customize. Answer each question to determine if you are "Not Prepared", "Moderately Prepared", or "Highly Prepared" in important areas of the EHR decision making process. The assessment contains direct hyperlinks in the areas within the toolkit that will provide necessary tools and guidance to help your practice move into the next level of preparedness and closer to EHR implementation. Click here to view and download the E-Louisiana EHR Preparedness Assessment.

Please note that the link to the assessment may not upload with certain versions of Internet Explorer. If you have problems opening the file, please e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to request a copy of the Preparedness Assessment.

You can also click here for the full version of the e-Louisiana Health Information Technology Tool Kit.

Accountable Care Organizations

What is an ACO?

Simply stated, an accountable care organization (ACO) is a group of health care providers who agree to share responsibility for the quality, cost, and coordination of care for a defined population of patients.

An ACO can be nearly any combination of group practices, networks of practices, hospitals, hospitals employing other providers, hospital-physician joint ventures, etc., as long as it is legally capable of receiving and distributing payments.
An ACO works with one or more payers (most commonly Medicare) to achieve the triple aim of improving population health, improving patients’ experiences of care, and reducing the total cost of care.
If an ACO saves money for the payer without compromising quality, it shares in the savings. Some contracts specify that if an ACO costs the payer more, it shares in the loss.
A successful ACO is composed of empowered primary care physicians who have the resources, data, and leadership to coordinate and manage care for patients across the entire community. Family physicians and other primary care providers are the most important element in any ACO.

The ACO health care model is part of the 2009 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), and payers hope that ACOs will save money while improving quality. Consequently, ACOs are likely to be an important part of the future for all family physicians. More than 400 ACOs have been started or announced to date, and still more are on the way.

Other ACO Resources:

The Family Physician’s Practice Affiliation Guide

This guide explores the trends driving physicians toward collaboration and affiliation, weighs the advantages and disadvantages of various affiliation options, and provides a detailed analysis of the hospital employment model. It looks at legal implications of various practice affiliations, and how the patient-centered medical home can be incorporated into these models.

The Family Physician’s ACO Blueprint for Success

Is a two-part guide to help family physicians develop their strategy to evaluate and implement a successful accountable care organization. Part one examines these new organizations and identifies essential elements, generally addressing specialties and facilities. Part two applies the principles and processes of the guide specifically for the family physician.

Medicaid Resources

LA Medicaid - Primary website and portal for physicians providing Medicaid services in the "fee-for-service" program. This site is maintained by Molina, which is the current Medicaid fiscal intermediary.

Medicaid Provider Manuals - The provider manuals for fee-for-service or legacy Medicaid can be accessed here.

Medicaid Fee Schedules - A compendium of the Medicaid fee-for-service fee schedules. For those providers in Bayou Health, these fee schedules represent the floor that may be reimbursed to contracted providers.

Medicaid State Plan - This document is required by the federal government and is the sole governing document of the Louisiana Medicaid program.

Medicaid Eligibility Manual - This document sets forth all eligibility categories and requirements for the program.

Medicaid Annual Reports - This document is produced on an annual basis by DHH and generally covers financial information on a fiscal basis with a two-year lag.

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E-Louisiana HIT Toolkit

Accountable Care Organizations

What is an ACO?

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