Projects

Realtime Medical Electronic Data Exchange (RMEDE™)


Developed in-house, RMEDE™ is a secure web-based life-state management system including the following features: a patient centric health record; a best of breed desk top quality scoring tool to enhance physician performance; an in-home monitoring system used to track patient physiological parameters and report out of compliance ranges to their healthcare provider; predictive modeling for future care costs; predictive modeling for quality and patient disease state migration; and predictive modeling for cost effectiveness of deployed disease management solutions. RMEDE™ is national in scope and practice and users include the Alabama Medicaid Agency the North Dakota Medicaid program, the Colorado Medicaid Program, the Montana Medicaid program, Alachua County, Florida, and pending contracts with private disease management firms. RMEDE™ driven projects have been shown to reduce ER visits, lower per member per month costs and improve medical compliance. A sample chart below demonstrate RMEDE™’s effectiveness:

RMEDE™ is also used to enhance physician quality measures by pushing information directly to the physician desktop.

Of note and significance, USA CSHI provides robust back-end support to the Alabama Medicaid Agency as a part of its Patient 1st program, Medicaid Maternity Care Program and the Together for Quality (TFQ) Initiative. The Patient 1st Program is a unique partnership between USA CSHI, ALMA, and the Alabama Department of Public Health Life Care nurses to provide an innovative Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system for Medicaid patient 1st patients with chronic diseases. There are currently over 600 Medicaid patients in Alabama that are actively transmitting home monitoring information into RMEDE™. In addition, CSHI has produced quality metrics on over 500,000 Medicaid patients in Alabama, and over 70,000 Medicaid patients with Asthma and Diabetes in the Together for Quality Q4U program. Physicians in the Q4U Care Management Program are able to use data generated by RMEDE™ clinical management tool to track – and impact – key health indicators of their patients with asthma and diabetes. Based on Medicaid’s paid claims information, RMEDE™ provides a foundation for practice improvement by providing timely reports on select clinical measures that can be addressed with patients through targeted interventions.

Alabama Incident Management System (AIMS)


Developed in-house, The Alabama Incident Management System (AIMS) allows and encourages ongoing, real-time communication between health facilities(Hospitals, Nursing homes, Community health centers, medical needs shelters, and EMS providers) and State Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs), tracking staff, facilities and supplies in times of normalcy and for distribution in times of stress.

Using AIMS’s web-based interface, data server and instant messaging, individual health facilities will report the status of their health care facility directly to the server, which instantly directs that information to the EOC in an easy to read graphical analysis.

AIMS consists of three main components: The health facilities within a health care planning region, county EOCs, and the AIMS server. Under normal conditions, health facilities will inform AIMS, and inherently EOCs, of the current status of resources and staff. When conditions stress the surge capacity of area health facilities, AIMS and EOC staff will negotiate the use of those resources so health facilities and health care personnel can meet the needs of the community in an efficient and orderly manner. Normally, this process can be seen as three stages of information flow. Below is a sample bed status data entry screen in AIMS:

First, using the web-based interface, each facility’s administrator will input pertinent data concerning such things as available burn units, supplies and staff on duty. Facility administrators can gather this information using the current HEICS hierarchy. AIMS’s intuitive interface will guide information input using specially designed drop down menus and form fields. Each facility will relay such information to the AIMS server at regular intervals.

At the server, the AIMS program instantly compiles that raw data into easily interpreted graphs, specific to each hospital within the health care planning region. For instance, local health facilities will be depicted with a field and each field will contain bars to represent various resources. So, burn units or biohazard equipment would be displayed by a vertical bar against a numerical Y axis.

Upon compilation, the information is directed to the local EOC for use when local surge capacities are threatened. This will allow each local EOC to discern exactly how many burn units, biohazard suits, and blood units are available continuously and at a glance. Below is a sample EOC screen in AIMS:

When natural disaster or man-made catastrophe strikes, the EOC will be prepared with vital information about resources within their health care planning regions, allowing rapid response with the right resources. Rather than the mayhem that could ensue during a mass casualty event, local EOCs will coordinate these resources with local health facilities, emergency medical personnel and emergency response teams. During an emergency, liaison officers at each participating hospital can update their resource status at regular intervals, providing their EOC with a clear picture of regional resources.

Advanced Regional Response Training Center (ARRTC)


The Advanced Regional Response Training Center (ARRTC), is a Center for Strategic Health Innovation (CSHI) all hazards preparedness training program made possible by a grant from the Alabama Department of Public Health, Center for Emergency Preparedness via a cooperative agreement from HRSA. CSHI is part of the College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama. To date, over 3,000 healthcare providers in Alabama have been trained.