Helping Baltimore County residents connect to better health and well-being

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Baltimore County Health Department uses CITI’s Consulting Services to use their new EHR to drive their Pop Health Management Efforts.

Background and Objectives

To improve the health and well-being of Baltimore County residents, particularly the underprivileged, Baltimore County Health Department was looking for help defining a program to drive their population health management efforts. Selecting and implementing a new EHR was the primary initiative while standardizing workflows across over thirty programs in the Health Department came in a close second. By consistently delivering important care data to the whole care team, this system would build a bridge to connect residents (particularly high-risk and underprivileged ones) to more personalized healthcare. The standardization process would also build a bridge to the County itself providing alignment with their overall 5-year strategic plan, particularly around equitable decision making, workforce empowerment, and government accountability.

Before implementing the new system, the County Health Department faced significant challenges including: - Data Access and Reporting Difficulties due to the limited functionality of a 15-year-old system (Visual Health Net – VHN) - Fragmented, undefined processes across the Health Department as each program developed its workarounds (without properly documenting them) to deal with the dated system. - Integration Challenges called for a simpler way to interact with ancillary systems such a CRISP and Immunet while providing interfaces to laboratory and billing systems.

Approach and Solution

Building the Bridge for the Health Department, Baltimore County Residents, and the County – Getting to where you want to go demands a clear understanding of where you are now and directions for getting there. To gain this knowledge, the Baltimore County Health Department turned to Creative Information Technology, Inc. for Consultative Services in September 2021. They relied on our 25 years of experience. As it relates to the Health Department, they needed to understand what technology was working and what was not, identify the manual processes currently being used and the gaps in their workflows, fully assess their readiness for implementing a new EHR, and verify that the right stakeholders were committed to the project.

To create a bridge to health and well-being and to align with the County’s strategic plan, the Health Department gained the following guidance from us: - Current State Assessment – To develop a detailed understanding of “where they were” through frequent meetings at the onset of the project to Assess Change Readiness, Conduct Gap Analysis, and Define the Work Plan. This also involved the creation of a Requirements Matrix. - Workflow Analysis – To understand “what they were doing” - a team of experts met with key staff and documented the workflows in a visual. This led to the creation of a Best Practices document to standardize workflows to increase process efficiency. - RFP Creation and Support – To find the right EHR for their requirements at the right price - Vision Documentation and Implementation Roadmap – Picking the “destination” – desired Future State - and set the trip route for getting there with well-defined timelines. - Performance Benchmarks – Setting standards to measure success – “are we there yet?” Are the results systematic, predictable, and consistently repeatable?

Outcomes

Successfully Completing a Government Project Early and On Budget – Following our guidance, the Health Department can now: - More quickly view vital care data – Using tools like a data dashboard to assess trends in the patient’s condition and immediately pay attention to critical health conditions. - Reduce errors and increase efficiency – By automating, standardizing, and documenting their processes, the Health Department eliminates inefficient manual processes. - More easily create improved required reports – Central automated collection of data generates more accurate unified reports for internal and external agencies. - Better Coordinate Care and Collaborate as a Unified Team – Working from a single, comprehensive patient record that enables them to focus on the patient’s care plan. With our guidance, Baltimore County Health Department can now use its EHR to build a better bridge for Baltimore residents to achieve health and well-being.

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