Cardiovascular Care Disparities: Safety-Net HIT Strategy

Project Details -
Completed

 

The purpose of this grant was to plan the design the implementation of a longitudinal cardiovascular disease information system (LCIS) platform to address disparities in cardiovascular disease in the unique safety-net Charity population in Louisiana. Using the Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) Disease Management program within the eight-hospital Health Care Services Division (HCSD) of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) as the template, the LCIS design process was undertaken by a unique partnership between LSUHSC, Tulane University Schools of Medicine and Public Health and Tropical Medicine, ARMUS Corporation (the technology provider), and the LA Department of Health and Hospitals Office of Public Health. The design process evaluated the infrastructure, information technology, and care delivery process within the HCSD. The focus was directed at augmenting existing resources and creating an LCIS for collecting, analyzing, and coupling clinical and financial data to assess the medical and financial care effectiveness in this CHF population. This LCIS would enable addressing the significant care-delivery and patient-related disparities within this population and setting. A model prototype of the LCIS was developed from this Partnership's consensus analysis and development process, including testing and evaluation components. This patient-provider encounter-driven prototype enabled multiple, diverse providers to collect longitudinal CHF data from patient encounters within multiple care-delivery settings. Prototype testing and refinement was being undertaken at the time hurricane Katrina devastated LSU and Tulane Schools of Medicine, and disrupted forever the HCSD/Charity safety-net population and system.