May 2021
Clinical
Nursing
Ambulatory Care Services
Harris Health System
This team is working to improve the health of our vulnerable population.
The Title V, Healthy Texas Women, & Family Planning Program Team was formed in August of 2019 and was tasked with developing a process for sustainability in supporting these grant programs. We are proud to call ourselves a multidisciplinary team that consists of the following individuals: Antoinette "Toni" Cotton (Chief Nursing Officer and Executive Sponsor), Katie Kerbow (Nursing Program Manager and Clinical Liaison), Amada "Victoria" Sanchez (Nursing Program Manager), Carla Jones (Nursing Operations Coordinator), Christine Victorian (Director, Quality & Patient Safety – ACS), Denny Anderson (Director, Grant Accounting), Thadeus "Ted" Banaglorioso (Clinical Informatics Analyst, Clinical Decision Support), and Kathryn "Kate" Crary (Director, Grants & Resource Development).
This team is working to improve the health of our vulnerable population through the delivery of quality care, coordination of care, and education which directly supports our mission. Our team partnered with the clinics to determine why the grant audits were not being completed on time and finalized a thorough root cause analysis. This team has worked diligently together to determine reporting concerns and validity of Verge; the system we use to input audits of grant programs and report metrics along with the specific grant requirements.
We determined through our root cause analysis that we had an opportunity for standardization of the audit process and now have one person completing the audits. Our team was able to catch up with all audits as of November 2019 and currently, Verge is being updated with the most current metric questions for the audits going forward. Fourth-quarter audits will show the results of where our opportunities are to better serve our patients.
These grants allow us to provide services to our patients that we may not be able to provide otherwise. For example, when we consider our patients that experience postpartum depression and intimate partner violence, we are able to specifically screen for these patients and we are not just supporting a grant but saving lives. Homicide (18.64%) and Suicide (15.25%) makes up a total of 33.89% of maternal deaths in Texas from 2012-2015 (Houston Endowment, 2018). We serve the most vulnerable population in Houston and 25-60% of these women suffer from postpartum depression depending on their socioeconomic status and risk factors (Grimbergen, Raghuram, Dorland, Miller, Correa, & Bocchini, 2017). Our screening makes a difference and impacts their lives. This team has formed a larger team; including Eligibility Services, Patient Access Administration, Decision Support Services, Registration Services, Patient Accounting, and Revenue Service, and ACS Operations that has decided to meet quarterly before our ACS Quality Review Council and this will allow us to discuss opportunities for improvement in processes to improve patient outcomes.
This team is working to improve the health of our vulnerable population through the delivery of quality care, coordination of care, and education which directly supports our mission. Our team partnered with the clinics to determine why the grant audits were not being completed on time and finalized a thorough root cause analysis. This team has worked diligently together to determine reporting concerns and validity of Verge; the system we use to input audits of grant programs and report metrics along with the specific grant requirements.
We determined through our root cause analysis that we had an opportunity for standardization of the audit process and now have one person completing the audits. Our team was able to catch up with all audits as of November 2019 and currently, Verge is being updated with the most current metric questions for the audits going forward. Fourth-quarter audits will show the results of where our opportunities are to better serve our patients.
These grants allow us to provide services to our patients that we may not be able to provide otherwise. For example, when we consider our patients that experience postpartum depression and intimate partner violence, we are able to specifically screen for these patients and we are not just supporting a grant but saving lives. Homicide (18.64%) and Suicide (15.25%) makes up a total of 33.89% of maternal deaths in Texas from 2012-2015 (Houston Endowment, 2018). We serve the most vulnerable population in Houston and 25-60% of these women suffer from postpartum depression depending on their socioeconomic status and risk factors (Grimbergen, Raghuram, Dorland, Miller, Correa, & Bocchini, 2017). Our screening makes a difference and impacts their lives. This team has formed a larger team; including Eligibility Services, Patient Access Administration, Decision Support Services, Registration Services, Patient Accounting, and Revenue Service, and ACS Operations that has decided to meet quarterly before our ACS Quality Review Council and this will allow us to discuss opportunities for improvement in processes to improve patient outcomes.