Resource Search Results

Health IT enabled Quality Improvement Project Charter: The first step in a QI project. (2017). Resource Type: Publication. Description:  A Project Charter serves as a reference of authority for the future of the project. Creating a Project Charter and getting sign off from all participants gives all involved the authority to begin the work outlined therein. The task of developing the Project Charter builds understanding, consensus, and clarity about purpose, expectations, roles and responsibilities, and communications. Why develop a Quality Improvement Project Charter? Formalizes authority to dedicate resources (such as staff time) to the QI project Defines the purpose and expectations for the QI project Identifies key stakeholders to engage in QI project Clarifies roles and responsibilities of the QI Lead and QI Team members Assures commitment and support for QI project from leadership and QI Team members Provides a sustainable framework for any QI Project A Project Charter serves as a reference of authority for the future of the project. Creating a Project Charter and getting sign off from all participants gives all involved the authority to begin the work outlined therein. The task of developing the Project Charter builds understanding, consensus, and clarity about purpose, expectations, roles and responsibilities, and communications. Download the Project Charter (Word document) below to use with your QI team. It is important that this be completed with your QI team and leadership. Also, be sure to be as specific as possible when completing your QI charter, as this will be your reference for all things related to your project.  For example, rather than say you will hold monthly meetings, be specific that meetings will be the third Wednesday of the month at 9am. Another example, for the communication plan, be specific as to exactly who needs to be communicated with at what frequency, and through what channels. More Details...

Health IT and QI Workforce Development: Onboarding for Success: 11/29 HITEQ Highlights Webinar Transcription (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: A transcription of the November 29th HITEQ Highlights webinar.  After a brief introduction to HITEQ and this Resource Set, this webinar will highlight two specific tools for onboarding new staff into your health center with a focus on speeding the onboarding of Health IT and QI staff. The webinar will delve into the two onboarding tools - the Calendar and the Sample of a Staff Member’s Dashboard for Required Tasks, showing how they are meant to be used and how you can customize them for your needs. More Details...

Health IT-Enabled Quality Improvement: A Guide to Improvement: 10/4 HITEQ Highlights Webinar Transcription (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: A transcription of the October 4th HITEQ Highlights webinar. A transcription of the October 4th HITEQ Highlights webinar.  Improving care delivery is a business and mission imperative for health centers, and the HITEQ Center offers a growing collection of tools and services to support this journey. The foundation for these particular offerings is the "Guide for Improving Care Processes and Outcomes in FQHCs."  This web-based resource provides step-by-step guidance on understanding and improving workflows and information flows that drive performance on key targets such as hypertension control and colorectal cancer screening. Guide centerpieces include worksheets for documenting, analyzing, sharing and improving care processes for such targets. Strategies and tools in the Guide have been used successfully in various quality improvement (QI) initiatives, and a HITEQ Center focus is spreading this value more quickly and widely among health centers. This introductory training session introduces health centers and their partners to the Guide's proven approaches, worksheets and other health IT-enabled QI tool More Details...

Providing Civil Legal Aid Through Medical-Legal Partnerships: A Critical Enabling Service for Health Centers Serving Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AA&NHPIs) (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This case study highlights how a health center serving a high immigrant and limited English proficient patient population, including Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AA&NHPIs) integrated civil legal aid into its services through a medical-legal partnership (MLP) approach in order to address the social determinants of health (SDOH). Lessons learned in conducting this case study show that the MLP approach is essential to health care transformation and quality improvement. The approach encourages collaboration between health care providers and legal teams to work together to improve clinical practice and institutional policies to better respond to patients’ needs. More Details...

Guide to Improving Care Processes and Outcomes in Health Centers: An approach to quality improvement (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: The quality improvement QI approach outlined in this Guide can be used to augment current QI approaches used in your health center, or can serve as a placeholder QI methodology when there isn’t already a robust QI process in place. It provides a framework and tools for documenting, analyzing, sharing and improving key workflows and information flows that drive performance on high-stakes care performance measures, and related improvement imperatives. This webpage provides strategies and tools that health centers and their partners can use to enhance care processes and outcomes targeted for improvement, such as hypertension and diabetes control, preventive care, and many others. More Details...

Safety in the Health Care for the Homeless Settings: Consumer Perceptions and Advice (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Responding to the findings of a recent survey conducted by the HCH National Consumer Advisory Board, this resource provides recommendations for developing physical spaces that promote well-being, considerations for vulnerable populations, and strategies for providing workforce and staff support. More Details...

Using Health Center Needs Assessments To Address Legal Needs (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This fact sheet outlines how health centers can use community needs assessments to understand and meet their patients’ health-harming civil legal needs. More Details...

Health IT Staff Resume Screening Tool: A template for Human Resources and Hiring Managers (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This is a list of key words and phrases that can be used to pre-screen resumes for HIT/QI jobs to help quickly identify candidates for an additional screen. More Details...

Health IT Staff Recruitment Strategies: A template for Human Resources and Hiring Managers (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This resource provides ideas about the latest recruiting tips used by community health centers as well as leading organizations from other industries. Review the strategies and identify ones that could work in your organization.  Adapt them as necessary to fit your particular needs and resources. This resource provides ideas about the latest recruiting tips used by community health centers as well as leading organizations from other industries. Review the strategies and identify ones that could work in your organization.  Adapt them as necessary to fit your particular needs and resources. More Details...

Health IT Interviewing Questions: Examples for Human Resources and Hiring Managers (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This resource provides a list of sample questions that can be used to interview job candidates. The questions are organized into four categories: 1) questions for HIT staff positions; 2) questions for quality improvement staff positions; 3) questions for either position; and 4) questions for senior HIT or Quality positions.   This resource provides a list of sample questions that can be used to interview job candidates. The questions are organized into four categories: 1) questions for HIT staff positions; 2) questions for quality improvement staff positions; 3) questions for either position; and 4) questions for senior HIT or Quality positions.   These questions are intended to be a menu of items that an organization can pick or choose from, adapt to meet their organization’s needs, or use to generate additional/new questions. More Details...

Motivating Factors for Engaging in Health IT Enabled QI: Guidance for Health Center Leadership and Partners (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This white paper explores what is bringing a health center to the world of Health IT Enabled QI and lays out some motivating factors and barriers as well as what skill areas may need further consideration in planning next steps. Health centers across the country have a high EHR adoption rate and most have been using an EHR for several years. However, we know that the proliferation of EHRs and their companion reports have not always lead to accurate and robust data that can be used for quality improvement. Many challenges have been identified, including provider workflow and training issues, challenges with scalability, and limitations to data that can be extracted from various EHR systems. In response, a need has been identified for tools and resources that can guide health centers and those working with health centers through some key skill areas in the pursuit of Health IT Enabled QI. More Details...

Engaging the Data Creators: Involving Front-Line Staff in the Health IT Enabled QI Process (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This brief discusses the importance of including frontline staff such as front desk, intake staff, and medical assistants in Health IT Enabled QI process, as they are often the ‘data creators’ or the ones entering the information into the system. Real world examples as well as suggested approaches and further resources are included. The data that is generated within health centers through entry into the EHR or practice management system and used for myriad purposes such as decision support, reporting, and quality improvement is often input by front-line staff. This may include front desk staff who enter information on intake forms, medical assistants who enter height, weight, and vital signs, among others. Another way to look at it is the information that health center leadership, providers, and payers are using to make decisions is often ‘created’ by entry level staff that may have less training and higher turnover. For these reasons, it is critically important to consider these ‘data creators’ in quality improvement activities that are undertaken. More Details...

Accessing your Data: Questions to Consider with your EHR Vendor (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Intended to assist in ensuring full use and understanding of capabilities of current system and assessing the need for additional population health management or data integration tools, this checklist describes the steps health center quality improvement and IT staff can take to ensure they are maximizing the population health management and other capacity of current systems. It Included are questions around the system itself, report generation, training, and resulting data, as well as considerations before and after you contact your vendor. This checklist describes the steps health center quality improvement and IT staff can take to ensure they are maximizing the population health management capacity of their current EHR system. It is intended to assist health centers in ensuring they are utilizing the full capabilities of the current system and assessing the need for additional population health management tools. Included are questions around the system itself, report generation, training, and resulting data, as well as considerations before and after you contact your vendor.  It’s important to note that these questions are just meant for consideration. Not all of the features or aspects discussed will be relevant for your health center, and no system nor approach will check all the boxes. Use this to guide your thinking and discussions so you are able to get a robust understanding of what your EHR is capable of, and what you may need to find elsewhere or find other ways to address. Download the checklist below. More Details...

Needs Assessment in Action Profiles (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: A community health needs assessment is a major undertaking for any health center. The Needs Assessment in Action Profiles: Innovative Approaches to Identifying the Needs of Underserved Communities is a resource for health centers to learn about effective strategies utilized by their peers. This resource offers examples of three innovative approaches that have been successfully implemented by health centers across the country. Each profile includes information on the population assessed, data collection methods, how findings were shared and applied, and lessons learned. Health centers can use this resource to apply proven strategies to the planning and implementation of their own needs assessment. More Details...

Civil Legal Aid 101 for Health Care (2016). Resource Type: Toolkit. Description: This new tool provides an overview of the composition, role, limitations, and impact of civil legal aid for health care partners. There is also an accompanying messaging guide to help HRSA-funded health centers understand medical-legal partnership. More Details...

Quality Improvement Theory Burst: Process Mapping (2016). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Quality Improvement Training on how to use process mapping in your organization. More Details...

Coffee Break Webinar: Clinical Performance Improvement (2015). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Health Outreach Partners presents “Leveraging Outreach to Support Clinical Performance Improvement”. In this webinar, we first review what constitutes clinical performance improvement for health centers. Then, we provide several examples of how outreach and health center staff can collaborate to improve the delivery of clinical care to patients.Health Outreach Partners presents “Leveraging Outreach to Support Clinical Performance Improvement”. In this webinar, we first review what constitutes clinical performance improvement for health centers. Then, we provide several examples of how outreach and health center staff can collaborate to improve the delivery of clinical care to patients. More Details...

Impact of Enabling Services Utilization on Health Outcomes: Enabling Services Accountability Project (2009). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This factsheet highlights the impact of enabling services (ES) on diabetes and childhood immunizations at four health centers, Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center in Waianae, HI, Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in New York, NY, International Community Health Services in Seattle, WA, and Kalihi-Palama Health Center in Honolulu, HI. The results indicate that ES utilization is associated with better diabetes outcomes and child immunization. More Details...

Environmental and Occupational Screening Questions for the Primary Care Setting: Preguntas para sondear en los lugares de atencion a la salud (2007). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Three concise and effective environmental/occupational health screening questions for the primary care provider. English/Spanish resource More Details...

Enabling Services at Health Centers: Eliminating Disparities and Improving Quality: Challenges and Opportunities for Health Centers in Collecting Data on Enabling Services (2006). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This report describes a pilot study conducted by AAPCHO and four member health centers. Through this project, a uniform dataset on enabling services was created and a standardized method for collecting data was implemented. The data demonstrates that a high percentage of patients at health centers utilize enabling services (ES), and each user receives more than one ES. The data is able to provide information on the variations in utilization of enabling services and user characteristics at each health center. More Details...