PAWTUCKET – Patients at Blackstone Valley Community Health Care will help to make health IT history in Rhode Island on July 1 – the first to be able to download secure personally recorded health care data into their electric medical records, through the community health center’s mobile patient engagement app, "BVCHC."

The community health center, working in partnership with NextGen, its health IT systems provider, and Axial Exchange, the designer of the mobile app, will have achieved one of the key standards of Meaningful Use 3 – three years ahead its scheduled deadline for adoption.

At its free community health fair scheduled for Saturday, June 28, from 9 a.m. to 12 noon, Blackstone Valley will be assisting patients to show them how they can record their personal health data on their smart phones.

If patients want to, their personal health data can then be downloaded securely into their electronic medical record at Blackstone Valley, where it will be available for review and discussion at their next medical appointment.

Some of the data that patients can choose to record and download include daily measurements of weight, blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, physical activity and mood.

As an incentive, Blackstone will raffle off 10 FitBits to people who download the BVCHC on their smart phone at the health fair. FitBit is a wearable mobile device that enables a person to track his or her daily activities and exercise, including sleep patterns, and can sync directly with the new smart phone app.

The health fair will also offer free screening for glucose and cholesterol, in partnership with Lifespan and the Hallett Center. Gateway Healthcare will conduct mental health screenings and Blackstone Valley will offer body mass index screenings. Patients will be assisted in entering data from the screenings done at the fair on their new smart phone app.

In addition, there will be family entertainment, including a face painter, a Zumba demonstration, chair massages, and refreshments.

At the forefront of innovation
Blackstone Valley has been at the forefront of adoption and use of health IT innovations in Rhode Island. Through its sophisticated integration of health IT data at the point of care, it has been able to bend the medical cost curve by about $12 million over the last four years.

It is also one of the top-rated patient-centered medical homes in the R.I. Chronic Care Sustainability Initiative in terms of achieving health outcomes. 



Blackstone Valley has built its own health information exchange and a data warehouse for quality reporting at the point of care.

It is also currently working with Care New England and Memorial Hospital to link its IT network for its patients that use emergency room and urgent care services in Pawtucket and Central Falls. 



“We’re already a leader in achieving costs savings, and I think this is going to step that up a bit as a result of having more engaged patients,” Ray Lavoie, executive director at Blackstone Valley, told ConvergenceRI in an interview February at the community health center at 39 East Avenue, talking about the launch of the new customer engagement app for Blackstone’s 15,500 patients. [See link to ConvergenceRI article below.]

“The more engaged patients are with their own health, the more inclined they are to follow doctors’ orders, and if they follow doctors’ orders, their health will improve and health care costs will decline,” Lavoie said, explaining the value proposition of the app.

Christine M. Grey, Blackstone’s COO, agreed, saying that the primary focus is on improving patients’ health. “We’re hoping that our results will speak for themselves, and our results will become a best practice because of the way it benefits our patients and reducing their overall medical costs.”

The decision to move beyond patient portals to a smart phone app reflected the community being served. “Not everyone has a personal computer,” Lavoie explained. “But everyone seems to have a smart phone. We feel that the more channels we have available for patients to engage with their health care provider, the beter off and better informed everyone will be."