Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a knowledge-sharing model to expand the capacity of the health care workforce so that more people can get high quality care for their health conditions in or near the communities where they live. The model brings specialty disease expertise to community providers through its hub-and-spoke networks. The model relies on videoconferencing to connect local providers in non-urban or underserved communities (spoke sites) with an interdisciplinary team of specialist providers at academic medical centers (hubs) during virtual "teleECHO" clinic sessions, which include brief educational lectures and case-based, experiential learning. It is a guided, technology-enabled collaborative practice model in which community providers become experts in an area of community need within the scope of their practice, operating with increasing independence as their skills and self-efficacy grow. The model establishes meaningful, ongoing relationships with hub specialists who serve as telementors for spoke providers and relies on case-based learning from presentations of real-world de-identified patient cases.
The overarching goal of the project is to implement and evaluate an adaptation of the ECHO model to interstitial lung disease (ILD) diagnosis and care among primary care physicians (PCPs) and community pulmonologists in non-urban or underserved communities.
