Duck Update

I know you have all been waiting on the edge of your seats for the latest duck update so here it goes in summary form. The dad left the mom in true deadbeat duck fashion and left her to care for the two babies. A week later one of the babies was apparently ducknapped overnight leaving one baby and one single duck mother. The stress of single motherhood got to the mom two weeks later and she abandoned the sole surviving baby duck to our care. Heather and I legally adopted the remaining baby and have raised her into a fine adolescent duck. I am proud to share the pictures of our young duck daughter below. She doesn't fly yet but is practicing stretching and flapping her wings. if anyone has any resources for parents trying to teach a child to fly I would be grateful if you shared them.

Click here for background on the duck story.

No update would be complete with out a picture of Oscar. Next to it is a picture of the duck mom and the baby before the mom left.

$400,000 in New Funding

We found out this week that OneWorld has received two new grants totaling $400,000 in additional funding from HRSA. One grant is for $150,000 for behavioral health and one is for $250,000 for our dental services. This money will help sustain our current services and allow for some expansion of services in those areas. It is very rare to receive two of these awards in the same round of funding and is a testament to the work that Andrea and our development department do on behalf of our patients and staff every day. This is great news for our patients, the community and OneWorld!

OneWorld in the News

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is the arm of the federal government that provides OneWorl with our largest block of funding each year through what is called a 330e grant. OneWorld was featured in their newsletter this month in an article describing our donation of the mobile van to the clinic in Columbus Junction.

Click here to read the article.

Cass Family Medicine in the News

Click the link below to read about a special fundraiser benefiting OneWorld and Cass Family Medicine.

Click here to read the article.

EHR Project -- Where Are We and What's Next?

The first phase of the Electonic Health Record implementation has been completed. That phase was the successful implementation of the Practice Management module of the NextGen system. My thanks to everyone that made this phase a success are well chronicled in previous posts so I will spare you any more of that.

I estimate that the EPM implementation made up about 20% of the overall project so that leaves us with 80% to go. Currently the EHR Core team, the Groovy Ninjas, are meeting weekly to discuss and plan for the different parts of the Electronic Medical Record portion of the project that comprises the next 80%. A brief summary of those items are listed below.

Hardware
A team made up of Hans Dethlefs, Kris McVea, Eloise Poyner, Beth Levy, and Kimberly Gibilisco each spent several days with each of the tablet pc's that we were testing. Jeremy Holt, our IT Coordinator, searched for the best available options for tablet pc's for our providers and nurses and approved four tablets for testing by the harware team. The models tested were from Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo (IBM), and Dell. Tablets were rated on a scale from 1 to 10 on factors like battery life, feel, screen, handwriting recognition, speed, wireless signal, and aesthetics. After all of the scores were in each member ranked the tablets overall. Both the objective scores and the provider votes for their favorite scored a conclusive win for the Fujitsu Lifebook T4220. Jeremy has ordered them and they are being stored in a secret location awaiting their configuration.

EHR Templates
The Electronic Health Record is really a giant powerful database with thousands of forms that display the data and allow for the entry of new data in to the database and reports that allow the users to print data from the database. The forms in NextGen are called templates. The NextGen EHR that we purchased comes already with thousands of these templates ready to use. The problem is that the templates that come with the system might not necessarily be set up to operate in the the same work flow that we have refined here at OneWorld through years or redesign. Hans Dethlefs has set about the task of collecting information from sources in the clinic about which forms need modified the most and how they should be set up to streamline the product. This is a huge task and is going well so far although there is a lot of work to do. Dr. Dethlefs is working with Tom Oakes from Personal PC Consultants on the programming side of this.

Other Items
The EHR core team is aslo developing plans for training, preloading data from existing charts, and interfacing with Creighton's lab system and the State of Nebraska's new immunization registry.


An Update on the Blog

Since the inception of the blog on 1/17/08, 359 unique visitors have logged on a total of 4,447 times and viewed 6,605 pages. The 359 visitors were from 13 different countries. Whoever can guess the most correct countries (*Hint-4 different continents) that visitors have come from will receive a $20 gas card. Email me your guesses by Friday. Visitors came from 65 different cities as well. Anyway, thanks for reading. If you are reading this and don't work for OneWorld maybe you should consider it. There is a link on the right side of the blog that shows current job openings. If you are gainfully employed and stumbled across it looking for EHR information don't hesitate to email us and we can share whatever information might be useful. There is also a link on the right where you can donate to OneWorld. We are a non-profit federally qualified community health center and every dollar you donate goes to helping people who would otherwise have little or no access to high quality health care.

The Second Livestock Exchange Building

Phyllis Masek, Credentialing Specialist, located the picture below on the Omaha Public Library website. This image is of the second Livestock Exchange Building taken in 1900. The building that we work in is the third Livestock Exchange Building and was completed in 1928. This image shows the structures facing south across “Exchange Avenue” which was later changed to “O” street. At the time of the photo, the street was unpaved. The stockyards began in 1883 when Wyoming cattle baron, Alexander Swan, wanted a livestock market closer than Chicago, IL. Together with six local businessmen he formed the Union Stockyards on December 1, 1883. The Drexel farmhouse served as the very first livestock exchange. The second exchange building was constructed in 1885 by J. E. Riley and designed by Mendelssohn & Fisher. The brick structure was 4 stories high with an 80 foot tower. The main floor had public offices and the largest dining hall in Nebraska that could seat 400. The second floor was home to the original Stockyards National Bank. A separate structure was built in 1891 to the east of the Exchange. The third and fourth floors primarily served as a hotel for cattlemen doing business with the Exchange. Thanks Phyllis for sharing this with us! I am also posting a picture of our current building taken between 1950 and 1960.

Free Ice Cream

In honor of National Health Center Week August 10th through the 16th we will be having an ice cream social on Thursday the 14th from 12-1pm in the first floor lunch room. The ice cream is being provided by Cold Stone Creamery so get there early!

Samurai Thank You

The thank you below was delivered at the all staff meeting today.

If we are lucky, a few times in our professional lives we get the opportunity to be a part of a team that is faced with a monumental task for which success is not guaranteed and that failure will be obvious to everyone. The Samurais that you see here all had full time jobs and more work to do already than there are hours in the day before they became Samurais. They were each approached and asked to be a part of this team and accepted knowing that they would still have to do their normal job in addition to this task.

Ana Gudino and Celia created and modified, and modified, and modified almost 300 different provider templates to accommodate the intricacies of our scheduling process.

Michelle and Jeremy took the lead in the setup and training of the system. Each of them was hired at the very beginning of the project and has through hard work, dedication, attention to detail, and great internal customer service woven themselves into the fabric of OneWorld to a point where they are now indispensable. They have spent countless hours doing group and one-on-one trainings and are still happy to help if anyone needs a remedial class.

Alicia and Sara Cervantes both agreed to be a part of the team knowing that it meant long hours, mandatory overtime including weekends and time away from their daily duties knowing that those duties would be piled up waiting for them when they got back. Your input on the front line processes of the organization was irreplaceable.

Hans Dethlefs, in case any of you didn’t know, is a doctor here at OneWorld. He volunteered for the team so that he would be able to offer input on the practice management processes from a provider standpoint and also to learn everything there is to know about the EPM from the ground up. I have leaned on him for advice so much that he now thinks it is ok to offer it without my asking.

Sarah and Hector have been the heart and soul of this EPM implementation. Their attention to detail, commitment to the project, and passion for OneWorld can never be replaced. They mobilized the operations staff to get all of the work done and have led their team through the long days and long lines without a complaint.

This is your team of Samurais. A team that I feel lucky to have been a part of. Please join me in showing my appreciation and the appreciation of the entire organization.