U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Indian Health Service: The Federal Health Program for American Indians and Alaska Natives
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NPIRS CLINICAL DATA MART

Community Health Representative (CHR) Case Study

Problem

We don’t know which CHR tribal programs are exporting data. How do we justify the overall CHR program and the services it provides? How can we provide a national report to Congress for continued funding? What kind of services are the CHR’s providing in their communities? How do we know if data exported from my CHR program has been received and processed?

These were some of the challenging questions and issues facing the CHR program. CHR data is entered into the local Resource Patient Management System (RPMS) repository. Once entered, data is available for local use and reporting. However, there was no way to easily obtain national level data, ensure data exports were received and processed and CHR’s were providing appropriate levels of care in their respective communities.

Partnership

Having seen data marts developed for other Office of Clinical and Preventive Services (OCPS) programs, the CHR program approached the National Patient Information Reporting System (NPIRS) program to form a partnership for a CHR data mart. The CHR program identified "core" reports, identified web functionality and provided report "logic" to assist in programming reports to be available in the application. An electronic export process was also developed which would export data from local CHR RPMS systems to National Programs located in Albuquerque, NM. Once the export files arrived at National Programs, the NPIRS takes control of the data via automated data handling routines and updates the CHR database. CHR users then access the pre-programmed reports via a web-browser using a series of "drop down" boxes and menu options.

Results

The CHR web-based data mart continues to be the single source of nationally aggregated data available to the national CHR program. The application serves as the primary tool used for budget justification activities and to continue Congressional support for the CHR program. In addition to budget justification, reports containing health services, activity codes, referral information and problem codes are all available by CHR program, Area and National level reporting. The application also contains a "file tracker" useful for ensuring export files have been received and processed. The application is currently being migrated from the "JAVA" platform to the agency standard "ColdFusion" web development platform.