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Health Passport News Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming Winter 2001 |
Reno Project Update
The Reno project has hired a new site manager.
Ginger Paulsen was hired in early January.
Ginger brings to Health
Passport a background in Marketing and Project management.
The Washoe County demonstration began on June 2, 2000.
June 1, 2000 though January
13, 2001 a total of 7074 Health Passport cards have been issued by participating
partners.
On February 8th, our project partners met for
an all day strategy meeting. Terry
Williams who is the Health Passport Manager for the Western Governors'
Association was able to join us. Terry
gave an overview of the project and updated the group on the project's future.
Hat's off to all of the dedicated staff from the partner agencies that
have kept the Health Passport project going during the critical first months.
With the hiring of a new site manager, our hope is to make this project
less burdensome for our partners.
Bismarck Project Update
Since the launch June 2, 1999, Bismarck has issued just under 2100 cards.
WIC continues to be the main point of issuance even without WIC EBT.
After 18 months of use the clients have become much more familiar with
the use of the cards and are doing much better with remembering their Personal
Identification Number's (PIN'S). During
the coming months North Dakota HPP will be working on revitalizing the use of
the cards at the partners level by reminding clients to carry their cards to all
appointments and have the most recent information added to the card at the time
of their visits. Head Start
enrollment planning is now proceeding and we want all potential enrollees to
have current cards.
The use of the kiosks has been overwhelming.
The Dan's stores are the most active sites with nearly 300 hits per
month. Most are the general population just wondering what Health
Passport is but many are printouts of the immunization and medical information.
Whether it is for official needs or baby books, it is exciting to see the kiosks
visited.
Wyoming Partner Update
Wyoming has 4
partner sites in Laramie County: Cheyenne Children's Clinic, Head Start,
City-County Health Department and WIC. We
conducted a phased launch in the summer/fall of 1999 for all sites with the
exception of WIC. To date we have
issued close to 1000 client cards. We
have entered the "transition" period of the project, which means we
will continue Health Passport with current partners and are discussing starting
up with other partners such as Medicaid and a Head Start statewide rollout.
The Wyoming Department of Health and the Office of Medicaid is submitting
an APD to request enhanced funding from HCFA in implementing the statewide
immunization registry. Health
Passport will replace the paper Medicaid ID coupons and will be able to collect
immunization data for inclusion on the registry as well as EPSDT screening data.
WIC was delayed in their launch as they were concurrently rolling out
WIC/EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) statewide.
We are now in the phase of performing the regression test of the WIC/EBT/HPP
system in February and will start issuing cards to WIC clients in a few months.
The clinic has a caseload of approximately 1542 clients.
Laramie County Head Start will be reviewing the paper documentation that
is currently used for enrollment to see which forms can be eliminated with the
increased use of the HPP card. We
are also discussing the process of doing intake applications on the computer
directly, as the parent is present. Early
April we plan to have a training session for staff that encompasses their Head
Start Family Information System, HPP and web technology introduction.
Public Health
Nursing and Cheyenne Children's Clinic use immunization software (Health Master)
to enter information into their local databases and then write that onto the
client's Health Passport Card. Discussions
are currently underway to determine other ways the card might be more useful to
staff. Success of the project so
far is due to the commitment and hard work of partner staff!
Head Start Grant Application
The Western
Governors' Association is currently in the process of preparing a grant proposal
to move towards statewide roll out of HPP/HSFIS in all three states (Nevada,
North Dakota and Wyoming) over the next three years.
The grant will include a robust schedule of planning, designing, testing
and training of the Head Start staff in the three states to implement as
user/client friendly automated system for Head Start enrollment.
The grant-funding period would be from July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2004 and
will include concentrated local agency staff involvement in all phases.
We look forward to working with new Head Start partners in the coming
months as we visit the local Head Start agencies to share the philosophy of the
grant.