Building Capacity through Health Information Technology
Client: Philadelphia Department of Public Health
The City of Philadelphia recently embarked upon a challenging health information technology (HIT) initiative to convert its existing paper medical records system to an electronic medical record (EMR) system. The city needed to find a knowledgeable vendor to perform a business analysis for a truly unique EMR solution, spanning two very large, diverse, disconnected City agencies. The City’s EMR system is expected to support all health care services delivered by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s eight health centers, nursing home and assisted living facility, as well as the Philadelphia Prisons System. These giant City agencies provide the bulk of clinical health care services to the City’s medically underserved, with almost 1,000,000 patient encounters annually. By converting to an EMR system, Philadelphia sought to streamline the tasks of maintaining patient care data and monitoring patient health, with the ultimate goal of improving the efficiency of patient care tracking within the Public Health Department.
Even in a large public health department, finding a team of public health professionals with the unique experience and knowledgebase the PHFE Team brought to the table would be difficult. Ordinarily, Health departments employ two types of staff: traditionally trained public health professionals such as nurses, epidemiologists, etc., and information technology staff. These employees usually work within their respective realms and aren't cross-trained. PHFE’s Consulting Team is unique; all our team members are experts in both traditional public health as well as health informatics, and have performed this liaison work successfully for years. We find this promotes efficiency and communication and saves money. For example, the PHFE Team in Philadelphia consisted of a Project Manager with previous experience implementing the District of Columbia Health Department’s EMR, an Epidemiologist, Client Manager, and Environmental Health expert with health informatics expertise, and an RN/MPH/MBA who co-edited the seminal text Public Health Informatics and Information Systems (O’Carroll, Yasnoff, Ward, Ripp, Martin, eds., 2003). Having such a highly specialized team in place to build requirements and help design the EMR solution freed the City of Philadelphia staff to focus on the demanding day-to-day activities of their public health and corrections programs. PHFE’s consulting team provided the City of Philadelphia with customized, high quality, affordable expertise.
The services PHFE provided the City of Philadelphia were highly customized. PHFE’s unique team of public health informaticists was able to bridge both cultural and technical agency differences. Working closely with City stakeholders, the PHFE consulting team was instrumental in bringing the City Public Health and Prisons System agencies together at the table and bridging organizational cultural differences between the two powerful groups -- a feat that City stakeholders were quick to recognize as a significant benefit of their partnership with PHFE.
Once a common goal for the EMR implementation was identified, our PHFE team leveraged their deep understanding of both traditional public health as well as health informatics to develop a customized EMR project plan. The PHFE Team was able to quickly gain the confidence of stakeholder groups. PHFE quickly and efficiently conducted an extensive business functional analysis, including diagramming workflows, identifying 900+ EMR requirements via multiple workgroups, and assessing IT integration and interface needs. In addition, PHFE served as lead author for all resulting reports, and prepared and issued an EMR Request for Information (RFI) and Request for Proposal (RFP) to potential vendors. Ongoing workgroup and stakeholder sessions ensured that all key parties remained involved in the process and updated on the progress of the project. The City of Philadelphia stakeholders deemed the EMR analysis project a success, and are issuing our RFP to qualified vendors. The City intends to retain PHFE’s services to help implement the system once a vendor is on board.
The City of Philadelphia EMR Initiative is just one example of how PHFE has successfully partnered with public health departments across the country. PHFE’s consultants build the capacity of public health departments while promoting efficiency and cost-effectiveness by ensuring that time and resources are used wisely.
For more information on PHFE's Consulting Services, visit our Consulting Services section.
