About ECHO

There is a learning loop where knowledge flows from specialists to primary care providers. Primary care providers then share knowledge with each other, and they also share knowledge of their local cultural norms with the specialists.

Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a movement to connect local primary care teams with inter-disciplinary specialist teams to spread knowledge and amplify local capacity to provide best practice care for complex chronic health conditions. ECHO’s goal is to enable rural and traditionally underserved populations to receive high-quality care, when they need it, close to home. This low-cost, high-impact intervention is achieved by leveraging technology to connect expert mentors and multiple local primary care providers in online video-conferencing TeleECHO clinics.

The Opioid Use Disorder TeleECHO Clinic is led by experts at the Indiana University School of Medicine with a particular educational focus on addiction and opioid use disorder (OUD) diagnoses. The non-medical use of prescription opioid pain relievers and the use of illicit opioids such as heroin have led to an unprecedented increase in overdose deaths in Indiana.

The Purpose of Project ECHO

And among Indiana counties with the highest rates of non-emergency room visits due to opioid overdoses in the past five years, all but one of the counties ranking in the top third are wholly or partially considered rural.

Transportation access and provider locations can serve as crucial barriers to access and use in rural areas, along with lack of quality or specialty care and social isolation

The Opioid TeleECHO Clinic will be held in weekly one hour sessions, consisting of a brief lecture on a topic related to OUD and a review and discussion of 2-3 cases submitted by participants that we work through in a collaborative fashion to better diagnose and manage the patient.

Participation in Opioid TeleECHO is freely available to primary care providers and other stakeholders in Indiana. We would particularly like to collaborate with providers who would be interested in becoming a local expert in the field in their region of the state.

To join, please fill out a brief survey HERE.

An abstract printed in the Journal of Substance Abuse regarding Project ECHO for OUD can be found HERE.