Providing access to licensed content for care providers statewide: lessons learned.

摘要

BACKGROUND:A bill designed to improve health care access and quality for all citizens of Washington State was passed and signed into law in May 2007 [1]. Many of the bill's provisions stemmed directly from recommendations made by the governor's Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Costs and Access. One of the commission's recommendations was that health care providers follow evidence-based standards of practice, where available. This recommendation was incorporated into law by mandating that the University of Washington (UW) Health Sciences Library (HSL) develop a web portal where eligible providers across the state could access evidence-based information to support patient care. To fund this portal, the law required that the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) impose a maximum Dollars 25 per year add-on to the license fees of health care providers.* State associations representing licensed care providers were contacted by legislative staff about whether or not their members should be covered by this legislation. Based on those efforts, 14 professions were named in the enabling legislation, totaling more than 150,000 providers (Table 1).