Project ECHO
Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a collaborative model of medical education and care management that empowers clinicians everywhere to provide better care to more people, right where they live. The ECHO model™ does not actually “provide” care to patients. Instead, it dramatically increases access to specialty treatment in rural and under-served areas by providing front-line clinicians with the knowledge and support they need to manage patients with complex conditions such as: hepatitis C, HIV, tuberculosis, chronic pain, endocrinology, behavioral health disorders, and many others. It does this by engaging clinicians in a continuous learning system and partnering them with specialist mentors at an academic medical center or hub.
ECHO History
Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a movement to demonopolize knowledge and amplify the capacity to provide best practice care for under-served people all over the world. Project ECHO started as a way to meet local healthcare needs. Sanjeev Arora, M.D., a liver disease doctor in Albuquerque, was frustrated that thousands of New Mexicans with hepatitis C could not get the treatment they needed because there were no specialists where they lived. The clinic where he worked was one of only two in the entire state that treated hepatitis C. Dr. Arora was determined that all patients in need of treatment should get it. He created Project ECHO so that primary care clinicians could treat hepatitis C in their own communities. Launched in 2003, the ECHO model™ makes specialized medical knowledge accessible wherever it is needed to save and improve people’s lives. By putting local clinicians together with specialist teams at academic medical centers in weekly virtual clinics or teleECHO™ clinics, Project ECHO shares knowledge and expands treatment capacity. The result: better care for more people. Treatment for hepatitis C is now available at centers of excellence across New Mexico, and more than 3,000 doctors, nurses and community health workers provide treatment to more than 6,000 patients enrolled in Project ECHO’s comprehensive disease management programs for myriad conditions. A 2011 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the quality of hepatitis C care provided by Project ECHO-trained clinicians was equal to that of care provided by university-based specialists. What’s more, Project ECHO has expanded—across diseases and specialties, across urban and rural locales, across different types of delivery services, and even across the globe. Today, Project ECHO operates more than 130 hubs for more than 65 diseases and conditions in 23 countries.
ECHO Model
The ECHO model™ breaks down the walls between specialty and primary care. It links expert specialist teams at an academic ‘hub’ with primary care clinicians in local communities – the ‘spokes’ of the model. Together, they participate in weekly teleECHO™ clinics, which are like virtual grand rounds, combined with mentoring and patient case presentations. The clinics are supported by basic, widely available teleconferencing technology. During teleECHO clinics, primary care clinicians from multiple sites present patient cases to the specialist teams and to each other, discuss new developments relating to their patients, and determine treatment. Specialists serve as mentors and colleagues, sharing their medical knowledge and expertise with primary care clinicians. Essentially, ECHO® creates ongoing learning communities where primary care clinicians receive support and develop the skills they need to treat a particular condition, such as hepatitis C or chronic pain. As a result, they can provide comprehensive, best-practice care to patients with complex health conditions, right where they live.
Egypt ECHO
The aim of our project is to implement the ECHO model in Egypt, benefiting from Egyptian experts inside and outside the country to help train young physicians, especially those working in rural and remote areas.