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Capital Campaign for Carlin Community Health Center
In 2008 the City of Carlin donated land to Nevada Health Centers for the purpose of building a new health center. NVHC's current health center in Carlin is out dated and too small for the number of patients we see. In 2009 we hope to raise enough money to build a health center right next to the new senior center and the planned new library. The new health center will be more centrally located and will be designed to better accommodate the growing population of Carlin. We will have three exam rooms, an x-ray room, a dispensary for medications and an emergency room. Watch the web site as we post our progress. To make a donation to our Carlin Capital Campaign, please go to our donation page.
Electronic Health Records
Thanks to very generous funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Lincy Foundation, NVHC is implementing electronic health records (EHR) at all of our health center sites. EHR improves quality of patient care in many ways. First of all, the medical record is never lost and the medical record can be accessed from various sites. Some people visit our different clinic sites due to geographical moves or because they are visiting a new town or a new part of town. As long as they visit one of NVHC's health centers their medical record will always be available. The EHR system also works with the providers to remind them of when it is time for various patient preventive exams, patient tests, and how frequent a patient should be seen. Prescriptions can be sent electronically to pharmacies and results of lab work will transfer right in to the patient record. In addition EHR improves billing, coding and appointment making. NVHC currently can transfer our OB patient records directly to the hospital where they will deliver. In the future we hope to be able to do this for our patients that are having surgery or other hospitalizations. EHR also provides us with population based data about the health of our patients and about the quality of medical care that is being delivered. All of our sites will be using EHR by April of 2009!
Quality Measures Study
Nevada Health Centers is embarking on a new five year quality measures study through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). This study will be done at most community health centers throughout the nation and results will be used to measure the quality of patient care from health center to health center and from year to year. Six measures of study were chosen by HRSA and they include: 1) Blood pressure levels in patients diagnosed with hypertension, 2) Hemoglobin A-1C levels in diabetic patients, 3) Frequency of Pap smears in adult women, 4) Trimester of pregnancy when women enter prenatal care,5) Birth weight of new born babies 6) Immunization rates of two year olds. NVHC will also study 1) depression, 2) oral health education and 3) childhood obesity. Each year NVHC will expand our study by adding one or two measures. The object is to actually look at the health of the patient not just the frequency of patient visits. The electronic health record system will be an asset to collecting the data for the study.
Development Team at NVHC
NVHC receives a base grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to help offset the cost of covering care to the uninsured. Approximately 30% of our expenses are covered through our base grant and in this time of high unemployment and economic cut backs, our patient needs are expanding. NVHC needs to increase our community support for the health center sites. We expect to provide care to 60,000 or more people in 2009 and can only do that with community involvement. Operating more than thirty health centers and program throughout the state and providing care to everyone is a daunting financial challenge. In order to increase awareness about Nevada Health Centers and our needs to our local communities, NVHC has expanded its development team. The Development Director has been with the organization for nine years and now there is a Development Manager and a Development Coordinator that will increase our ability to bring in more grants, foundation support and personnel donations. We will also be increasing public awareness about the important role that Nevada Health Centers plays in frontier, rural and urban areas of Nevada.
New Key Administrative Positions
Nevada Health Centers continues to grow to meet the health care needs throughout Nevada. New administrative positions have been created to keep up with our growth. The Human Resource Director will oversee all human resource activities for our more than 340 employees. An Operations Director was recently hired to oversee the day to day operation of all our health centers. Five Regional Operations Directors assist her in overseeing health centers throughout the state. In addition, NVHC created the position of Information Officer. With our sophisticated electronic health records system, we needed someone to help manage all the data through special reports.
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