Communications, Connected Care and Beacon Communities

What is the Beacon Community Program? 

The Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program is part of a larger health care improvement revolution that demonstrates how health IT investments and Meaningful Use of electronic health records (EHR) advance the vision of patient-centered care, while achieving the three-part aim of better health, better care at lower cost. The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) is providing $250 million over three years to 17 selected communities throughout the United States that have already made inroads in the development of secure, private, and accurate systems of EHR adoption and health information exchange. Each of the communities, with its unique population and regional context, is actively pursuing the following areas of focus:

• Building and strengthening the health IT infrastructure and exchange capabilities within communities, positioning each community to pursue a new level of sustainable health care quality and efficiency over the coming years; 
• Translating investments in health IT in the short run to measureable improvements in cost, quality and population health; and;
• Developing innovative approaches to performance measurement, technology and care delivery to accelerate evidence generation for new approaches.

Why are Beacon Communities relevant to our Eye Care Communications project? 

The above description is taken from the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology website.  The basic task of the Beacon Community Program is to look at the total health care resources of these 17 selected communities and see how they can most effectively work together to get the best community-wide health care outcomes at the lowest cost. Their challenge is to develop innovative ways for health care providers and resources to work together to optimize patient outcomes, to develop ways of consistently delivering the highest quality care.  If you go to the link above and scroll down, you'll see a description of what each community project is asked to do. One of the broad goals of the Beacon Program is also to determine what items “bundled” payments must cover.

The results of the three-year project (2011 through 2013) are providing important information at the national level for developing health care policy.

Getting independent eye care providers involved in Beacon Community projects is a goal of the National Eye Care Communications Project.  Participation is essential if independent eye care is to be part of the developing model of care, and especially if independent eye care is to be included in the reimbursable services included in the bundled payment system.


Alistair Jackson, M.Ed.
Jim Grue, O.D.