Orange County Health Department improvement initiatives
One of the main reasons for this blog is to highlight improvements in the local healthcare system and to suggest options for increasing accessibility to health care in Central Florida.
The Orange County Health Department has received 7 different awards for its work to improve services and save money. Four of these were Florida Davis Awards, which are awarded to state departments for process and efficiency improvements.
Three of the Davis Awards recognized the following:
1) The Health Department’s Woman Infants and Children (WIC) and I.T. programs won a Davis Productivity Award for a client flow system that helped speed up clinic flow with a new software system called Q-Flow. The system helped WIC see clients in 30 minutes less each day while servicing the same number of clients with 5 less staff members. In addition to financial benefits, the new process resulted in 10% less wait time for clients.
2) The Immunizations team won a Davis Productivity Award for improvements that sped up processes, reduced waste, and improved services. The data processing project reduced the number of duplicate client records in state databases, improved vaccine accountability, and increased revenue.
3) The Health Department’s I.T. and Community Health programs won a Davis Productivity Award as the first county health department to start a mobile website in Florida, www.orchd.mobi. An estimated 5 HIV infections were avoided by education and early treatment through the mobile site, saving more than $90,000 annually in treatment costs.
It is great to see public health initiatives at work to reduce patient wait times, improve access to health information, and improve the accuracy of patient records.
(Source: newsroom.doh.state.fl.us)
