Projects

Going Paperless

Reducing the administrative burden for audiologist program staff at the Indian Health Service.

Executive Summary

The Indian Health Services’ Phoenix Area Hearing Improvement Program consists of five Audiologists who provide hearing healthcare to Native Americans/Alaska Natives across 17 different reservations in Arizona and Nevada. Our multi-million dollar hearing aid inventory is currently tracked using a disk operating system program 30+ years old. The program is faced with appointment waiting lists ranging from 4-8 months, inaccessible and dispersed patient data, and redundant processes for paper charting and data entry. For each patient interaction, staff must handwrite notes, re-enter into electronic health records (EHR), pull a paper file, handwrite a chart note, print a copy of EHR report for the paper file, and re-file it. These interactions also include mailed in repairs, telephone conversations, request for supplies, and more. Also, when in the field, providers often have to call into the office to get a verbal review of patient’s history as their files are not available off-site. This process is very inefficient, with reports being triplicated and valuable provider time spent pulling and filing 15 files a day or more. Based on research provided in the additional information section, our current system wastes an estimated $849,000 annually.

This team intends to investigate ways to improve and increase access to care with the modification and/or installation of 3 key software programs. QUASAR would be installed to allow data transfer from equipment to electronic health record with a button. NOAH would be updated and used as a “chart” to include all past hearing tests. NOAH would be installed onto the server so that it could be accessed in the field. TIMS, an audiology accounting program, would be integrated to NOAH and would allow for better tracking of the million dollars of products issued annually.

A project supported by the: HHS Ignite Accelerator

Team Members

Jennifer Imboden (Project Lead), IHS
Kristi Petersen, IHS

Milestones

January 2017: Project selected into the HHS Ignite Accelerator
February 2017: Time in the Accelerator began