Health Pilots

Rolling out a new phone system can be a daunting undertaking for health centers, especially because it involves call center personnel as well as office managers, medical assistants, and IT staff. During the pandemic, this pivot was especially important to support staff who found themselves shifting to remote work or bouncing between their home and office workstation. West County Health Centers made this leap, switching from traditional phone hardware and a reliance on telecom engineers to internet-based phones and a cloud-based system. Its leaders confirm it was a challenging endeavor, but one that was well worth it in the long run.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Summer Penn, Director of Clinical Informatics at West County  Health Centers
• Dialpad, an all-in-one voice -over-IP (VoIP) cloud-based platform that provides voice calling, messaging, and meetings
• Technology Hub, a CCI program that helps organizations vet, pilot, evaluate, and spread innovative digital health solutions targeting Medicaid markets and historically underinvested communities.

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

We chat with Xavier Ramey, chief executive officer of Justice Informed, a social impact consulting firm. He is an award-winning social strategist, noted public speaker, and conflict mediator. Xavier discusses with us the importance of language, ideas, narrative — and then how to create new, more impactful strategies.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Xavier Ramey, chief executive officer, Justice Informed
• Catalyst, CCI’s design thinking training program

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

Happy Summer! CCI is taking a break this August. During this organization-wide closure, CCI staff are planning to “unplug” together — rescheduling activities, snoozing notifications, and turning off screens. If you’re also looking to unplug, you should find this episode particularly compelling! We invite you to take a moment to [re]listen to one of last year's most popular Health Pilots episodes called, “Readiness, Response, Recovery, and Renewal.”

This "4 R’s" framework covers the different phases of the pandemic: readiness, response, recovery, and renewal. Our hope is that this scaffolding can help health centers and other safety net organizations navigate the evolving crisis.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Dr. Irene Sung, CCI coach
• Dr. Ken Epstein, CCI coach
• Resilient Beginnings Network, a CCI program dedicated to advancing pediatric care delivery models that are trauma- and resilience-informed so that 100,000 young children and their caregivers have the support they need to be well and thrive
• Heal SF, a comprehensive effort to provide immediate and coordinated mental health services for San Francisco's public, private, and non-profit health care providers
• Retired Public Health Leaders Respond to COVID Mental Health Crisis, Heal SF
• Trauma Transformed, an organization that advances trauma-informed and healing-centered systems

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

What does it look like to reshape the experience of scheduling appointments in a way that enhances the continuity of care? Patients manage competing commitments and may face certain barriers to make appointments and follow-ups. Community health center staff members are tasked daily with a large volume to meet the often insurmountable expectations of appropriately matching a given patient to the correct provider to a timely appointment. 

Petaluma Health Center took on this challenge leading with a data-driven and patient-attuned mindset aimed to optimize appointment utilization while also better enriching staff capability despite limited human resources, and overall ensuring for greater access to health.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Kimberly Keller, Director of Business Operations at Petaluma Health Center
• Jessicca Moore, Family Nurse Practitioner and Director of Innovation at Petaluma Health Center
• Aidan Health 
• PRAPARE Screening Tool
• WELL Health
• Technology Hub, a CCI program that helps organizations vet, pilot, evaluate, and spread innovative digital health solutions targeting Medicaid markets and historically underinvested communities.

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

"No has always meant go to me," says Tiffanie Harrison, a passionate educator, equity designer, and entrepreneur. We chat with Tiffanie about her work leading diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at schools and companies across the country. Learn about centering lived experience, how to create "brave spaces," community engagement, and more.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Tiffanie Harrison, an educator and strategist with a community focus
• Round Rock Independent School District
• Round Rock Black Parents Association
• Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health
• Catalyst, CCI’s design thinking training program

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

What does it take for an entire network of safety net health centers to transition to a new electronic health record (EHR) system — one that enhances coordinated care and is better equipped to serve their communities? 

For Community Health Center Network (CHCN), it was a multiyear journey involving many readiness assessments, drumming up excitement to encourage staff buy-in, and lots of collaboration across all levels of the organization. In this episode, we discuss lessons learned  and the bright spots of this enormous project. 

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Molly Hart, director of clinical optimization, Community Health Center Network (CHCN)
• Amit Pabla, chief quality and transformation officer, Axis Community Health (Note:  He has since moved on from this role.)
• Oregon Community Health Information Network (OCHIN)
• OCHIN Epic
• Technology Hub, a CCI program that helps organizations vet, pilot, evaluate, and spread innovative digital health solutions targeting Medicaid markets and historically underinvested communities.

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

A patient portal is a great innovation, but busy clinic staff don’t have time to help every patient get set up on them and answer all their questions about it. In addition, patients often need ongoing support on how to communicate with their provider on the website, get updates, and access their health records.

Enter the Health Tech Navigators — people serving in a role that is for the community, by the community.  These Navigators, hired directly from the community, work closely with patients to support not only enrollment, but to increase portal use and to bridge gaps in healthcare accessibility that have long existed with language, culture, trust, and tech literacy. Listen to how the Los Angeles Department of Health Services (LADHS) created and supports its Health Tech Navigator program to surface a growing practice of cultural humility and competency in patient engagement.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Anshu Abhat MD, MPH, Director of Patient Engagement in the Office of Patient Access at LADHS
• Mayra Ramirez, MSW, ASW, Staff Analyst, Program Manager with the Patient Engagement Program at LADHS
• LA Health Portal App
• Technology Hub, a CCI program that helps organizations vet, pilot, evaluate, and spread innovative digital health solutions targeting Medicaid markets and historically underinvested communities.

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

We chat with Levi Baer, a facilitator and coach who believes that joy, justice, and community are all at the heart of meaningful progress. His work focuses on creating welcoming spaces that are grounded in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices and anti-racism. Levi shares with us that trust is a foundation for equity work, as well as collaboration.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Levi Baer, a facilitator and community builder from Chicago
• Second Shift, a community-focused co-working space
• Catalyst, CCI’s human-centered design training program

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

Can a more advanced patient portal improve face-to-face visits? Appointments are often jam-packed with asking key questions, deploying screening tools, and then chronicling all those answers that it's increasingly difficult to also analyze patient data and provide insightful, in-the-moment guidance. Shasta Community Health Center bet that a revamp of its patient portal could enable patients to take a more active role in their care while also improving provider workflows. In this episode, we discuss how staff, patients, and other key stakeholders all collaborated on retooling and optimizing this platform.

Listen all the way through to the end for a special guitar jam from our guest!

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Charles Kitzman, chief information officer, Shasta Community Health Center
• InteliChart
• Technology Hub, a CCI program that helps organizations vet, pilot, evaluate, and spread innovative digital health solutions targeting Medicaid markets and historically underinvested communities

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.

Scheduling appointments is one of the biggest challenges facing community health centers. Patients often lose those self-addressed postcard reminders, and manually calling patients to book a recall appointment is a major slog for clinic staff. The flurry of activity around COVID-19 tests and vaccines has only compounded that problem, as patients encounter jammed phone lines and long wait times. But starting in 2021, Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center began piloting an automated patient recall system — one that offers easier, more efficient outreach, as well as the personalized text message nudge patients need.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: 

• Caleb Sandford, chief transformation officer at Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center
• WELL Health
• Technology Hub, a CCI program that helps organizations vet, pilot, evaluate, and spread innovative digital health solutions targeting Medicaid markets and historically underinvested communities

© 2022 Center for Care Innovations. All Rights Reserved.