Resource Search Results

Health Center EHR RFP Addendum (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This is an addendum template to be added to an EHR Request For Proposal (RFP) to help health center further specify the EHR functionalities needed. You may also consider using the available template introductory letter for your RFP as well. For further guidance, this resource can help to guide your organization through the process of EHR procurement using a comprehensive tool such as the EHR Planning and Procurement Toolkit from the Massachusetts eHealth Institute (MEHI). This template is intended to be an addendum to the Request for Proposal (RFP) Template for Health Information Technology. This template can be used to add requirements specifically relating to the specialized requirements and operating environments of health centers. 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...

Trauma Informed Care Webinar Series (2016). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Featuring nationally celebrated trauma expert Matt Bennett, this four-part webinar series examines how the Trauma-Informed Care paradigm can play a critical role not only in transforming providers’ approaches to care, but also in informing direct advocacy for real solutions to end homelessness. 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...

Orientation Follow-up Survey (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This follow up survey is given to the employee following the first 2-4 months of employment. This follow up survey is given to the employee following the first 2-4 months of employment. This information is used to inform the supervisor how helpful the orientation was and what, if any, information was missing. It can help improve the new employee orientation for future employees. More Details...

New Employee Orientation Evaluation Form (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This is an evaluation form to give to a new employee immediately following the orientation program. This is an evaluation form to give to a new employee immediately following the orientation program. The feedback generated from its completion will help the supervisor learn what can be done to make the orientation more effective in the future for future employees as well as on what topics the new employee still may need clarification. More Details...

Benefits and Tools for Onboarding and Orientation of New Staff Members: Guidance and Methods for Health Centers (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This document outlines the ways in which effective onboarding and orientation methods will result in shorter learning curves, improved job satisfaction, and improved retention.  This document outlines the ways in which effective onboarding and orientation methods will result in shorter learning curves, improved job satisfaction, and improved retention. It then provides explicit direction for how to organize an effective process, complete with checklists for supervisors to use to plan the process, and surveys for the employee to fill out immediately following the orientation and then again 2-4 months afterwards. More Details...

Transportation Quality Improvement Toolkit (2016). Resource Type: Toolkit. Description: HOP's toolkit titled “Transportation and Health Access: A Quality Improvement Toolkit" is an easy-to-use, practical guide to assist health centers with assessing the scope of the problem and finding solutions to missed medical appointments due to transportation barriers. The toolkit guides the user through the two key phases of the quality improvement process: Needs Assessment and Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, a continuous quality improvement process. Each section contains an overview of the concepts and sample tools. The tools are designed to be a starting point, and can be customized as needed to align with the specific context and resources of each health center. More Details...

Transportation and Health Access Infobook (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Since 2000, Health Outreach Partners (HOP) has conducted bi-annual national needs assessments of community health centers serving underserved populations. The findings have consistently demonstrated that transportation is a top barrier to health care access. This infobook provides a general introduction to the topic of transportation as a barrier to health care access in the United States. The material is drawn from interviews, case studies, and reviews of existing literature. Although geared towards community health centers, it is relevant to all health care providers. More Details...

Strategies for Providing Health Care for Frequent Users in Rural Communities: Rural Communities Build Health and Housing Partnerships (2016). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Access to healthcare and other critical services in rural communities is impacted by various factors from travel distances between locations to limited financial resources and provider capacity. Community health centers, supportive housing and social service providers and other health system providers have a great deal to benefit from partnerships that address Social Determinants of Health and enable them to share information, coordinate successful strategies and leverage resources. More Details...

Shelter Health: Opportunities for Health Care for the Homeless Projects (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This issue brief identifies certain health issues that can be particularly affected by shelter conditions, identifies opportunities for health centers to be engaged in local efforts to improve shelter health, and describes environmental health services supported by the federal Health Center Program. More Details...

Ask & Code: Documenting Homelessness Throughout The Health Care System (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Emerging health care financing models require much more sophisticated actuarial calculations than previous payment arrangements, often taking into account risk factors such as homelessness. Homelessness also has direct implications for clinical treatment decisions and integrated care models and should be noted in individual patient records. This policy brief provides a rationale for using the ICD-10-CM code for homelessness, outlines the challenges to maximizing this code, and offers strategies to consider to ensure health care providers ask about homelessness and record patients’ housing status. More Details...

Encrypting Data at Rest on Servers: Implications for Health Centers (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: It is common practice today to encrypt data at rest, that is, data stored on servers. This is especially applicable to health centers who are less frequently actively transporting data across disparate networks. Like many smaller healthcare organizations, Health Centers are particularly vulnerable to potential attack and infiltration by data hackers for several reasons: they tend to have fewer technical support staff, resource limitations make it harder to assess, implement, and maintain safe data practices, and organizational inertia limits preventive action when no threat is perceived.  It is common practice today to encrypt data at rest, that is, data stored on servers. Like many smaller healthcare organizations, Federally Qualified Health Centers FQHC are particularly vulnerable to potential attack and infiltration by data hackers for several reasons: they tend to have fewer technical support staff, resource limitations make it harder to assess, implement, and maintain safe data practices, and organizational inertia limits preventive action when no threat is perceived. To build off an old adage, no one ever got fired for encrypting their data. But what protection does that really provide? Is just encrypting data enough? First, let’s distinguish between three methods for encrypting data at rest. Full-disk encryption. Most modern operating systems like Linux or Windows Server provide the capability to encrypt their disks in their entirety. This is accomplished with symmetric encryption whereby there is a key or passphrase that a computer operator has to enter when the disks are encrypted and when the system boots to allow access to the data. Typically, the password must be manually entered on the physical server console, though some virtualized and cloud-based environments offer remote passphrase entry and varying degrees of passphrase management and automation. With full-disk encryption, software installed on the server does not need to know or do anything special to operate normally: the operating system provides transparent access to the encrypted data as necessary with very little performance loss. But note that the initial encryption needs to be done on a new disk or set of disks as an existing disk will be wiped clean in the process. So it’s easiest to do this during an initial deployment or migration to a new server. File system encryption. Physical disks are typically divided into one or more file systems by the operating system.  As an alternative to full-disk encryption, file system encryption allows administrators to encrypt only selected file systems or even just selected folders within file systems. This makes it possible to configure a server than can boot without a passphrase; and then require a passphase only after the system is up and running and needs to access its encrypted file systems.  Similar to full-disk encryption, the encryption is transparently provided to applications by the operating system.  Unlike full-disk encryption, developers and administrators need to be careful not to store sensitive files on non-encrypted file systems. Database encryption.  Another way to encrypt data at rest is at the database level: The database software Oracle, SQL Server can provide application-level encryption. Like operating system level encryption, a key or passphrase is entered by an operator when the database starts up, after which all database operations access the encrypted data transparently hence the name: Both Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server call the feature “Transparent Data Encryption”. For servers that may store sensitive data in files outside the database, this provides less protection than encrypting the entire file system, but likely protects the most sensitive data on the system. What kind of protection does encrypting data at rest really provide? Here are a few salient points: Benefits of Encrypting Data at Rest First and foremost, encrypting data at rest protects the organization from the physical theft of the file system storage devices which is why end-user mobile devices from laptops to cell phones should always be encrypted. While this might sound unlikely, the physical disk devices are only as secure as the data center where they are located. While data center access control policy is usually quite strict, in practice it can be quite lax. Door entry can employ weak precautions like old push-button unlock devices, and the proliferation of easily-swappable modular disks for quick maintenance makes removing a disk quite easy. Encrypting data at rest can protect the organization from unauthorized access to data when computer hardware is sent for repair or discarded. Encrypting data at rest can help to satisfy information security or regulatory requirements such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard PCI DSS or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act HIPAA. In some deployments, the actual file system where data resides is somewhat disconnected from the server upon which applications are loaded either through the use of a storage area network SAN or cloud-based storage. This introduces the possibility that an intruder could break in to the storage subsystem but not the rest of the system. Encrypting the storage subsystem can protect against such attacks. Limitations of Encrypting Data at Rest Encryption of data at rest provides little protection against intrusions in which a hacker gains remote privileged access to a running server in which the passphrase has already been entered. Even more so, if the applications that access the encrypted files or databases web applications, query systems are not themselves secured, a hacker who penetrates one of these applications gains access to the data, whether it is encrypted or not. For database encryption, note that some database management systems only support data encryption in more advanced read more expensive versions of the software. When full-disk encryption is enabled on a physical non-virtualized server, remember that an operator – a human being – will need to type the passphrase into a console whenever the system starts up. For database-level encryption, the passphrase will need to be entered when the database starts up. While this intervention increases the level of protection, it is at the expense of convenience, as systems cannot reboot automatically without a passphrase or even without someone actually being in the server room which can be especially inconvenient if the system manager is not collocated with the hardware. File system encryption can mitigate some of these startup issues. And, of course, if that passphrase is ever lost your data will be encrypted forever. Special Considerations for Virtualized and Cloud-based Environments As mentioned, some virtualized and cloud-based environments offer remote passphrase entry and varying degrees of passphrase management and automation for full-disk encryption – but be aware that there is often a tradeoff between convenience and security with automated solutions. For example, if a cloud provider keeps your passphrase and automatically provides it to the operating system at boot time, the level of security offered by the full-disk encryption solution is largely dependent on how securely the cloud provider manages the passphrase. While encrypting data at rest can be a useful component in a data security toolbox, it must be implemented with a full understanding of the protection it does and does not provide. Organizations should consult with their vendors, data security staff, system staff, and application staff to determine an appropriate set of actions to secure institutional data. More Details...

How to Effective Manage Social Media within the Health Center Setting: A HITEQ infographic of key principles (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This article written by Dr. John Halamka, CIO at Harvard Medical School and a Health IT adoption thought-leader, provides examples from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on best practices for healthcare providers in trying to manage social media efforts. This article written by Dr. John Halamka, CIO at Harvard Medical School and a Health IT adoption thought-leader, provides examples from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center BIDMC on best practices for healthcare providers in trying to manage social media efforts. Topics covered include communication strategies, responding to positive and negative comments, and staff awareness. These topics, while garnered from Mr. Halamka's experience with being CIO for BIDMC  are discussed in a way that is relevant to all health care settings, including health centers. Included in this article are straightforward policies or concepts that are easily adopted into an organization's social media policies no matter what their size. Click on the link below to gain access to the related article... More Details...

Using the Systems Usability Scale to Assess Patient Portal Systems: English and Spanish Templates (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: When deploying personal health information systems such as patient portals Health Centers will often encounter challenges in effectively engaging their patient population. Understanding where these challenges are originating can at times be difficult to determine. One obvious area of evaluation is in determining whether the system being deployed is appropriately usable for the population. When deploying personal health information systems such as patient portals Health Centers will often encounter challenges in effectively engaging their patient population. Understanding where these challenges are originating can at times be difficult to determine. One obvious area of evaluation is in determining whether the system being deployed is appropriately usable for the population. Patient perception of the overall usability of the patient portal system can be evaluated through use of survey instruments such as the Systems Usability Scale (SUS). SUS is a well-established and validated usability scale that helps to determine the value, ease and interest of users of a particular system. Located in the Downloads section below are English and Spanish SUS survey instruments. Also located below is a link to further information on leveraging the SUS measures.  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...

Serving Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Persons: Establishing and Improving Models of Care for Those without Homes (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Drawing from current literature and interviews conducted with health centers and a social support organization, this guide provides promising practices to consider when establishing or improving upon TGNC health services, including community needs, program structure, and funding. 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...

Health and Housing Partnership Profiles - Housing the First 100 Orlando FL: Case Study on Frequent User Intiatives in Orlando FL (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This Profile focuses on Orlando FL, and Orange Blossom Family Health - the Healthcare for Homeless Center in Orlando as part of a series of real Health Center Case Studies engaged in effective Frequent User Initiatives in communities around the country. More Details...

A Quick Guide on Consumer Engagement in Governance of Health Care for the Homeless Programs (2016). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Health centers serving people experiencing homelessness must meaningfully involve consumers with the lived experience of homelessness in their governance, either on their governance Board or through structures like Consumer Advisory Boards. This guide provides practical tips for organizations in setting up effective, empowering consumer governance structures and supports. The ideas in this Quick Guide were developed through conversations with over 20 key informants: consumer leaders, consumer support staff, and executive leaders of HCH projects who have facilitated consumer leadership both locally and nationally. More Details...