Onboarding Overview

Onboarding new employees is the process by which new employees get acclimated to their new job and ramp up to full capacity within that job. This is typically a multi-pronged approach as new employees have to be oriented to the unique culture of your health center, plus they have to learn the specialized skills, knowledge and behaviors expected to fulfill their particular responsibilities. This is especially challenging for Health IT and Quality staff because they work on their own as well as working collaboratively with staff across the health center in a number of capacities. Their orientation is therefore essential to providing high quality services to the whole health center.

It is important to give new Health IT and Quality employees as much support as possible to ensure that they adjust to their new job and start adding value as quickly as possible. Besides the general best practices of ensuring that all standard first day bases are covered, each specific department should have their own onboarding mechanisms. Listed in this section are two such resources for Health IT and Quality staff, in particular.

Health IT & QI Workforce Development Onboarding

Billing and Coding for HIV Prevention: PrEP, Screening, and Linkage to Care

As part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Capacity Building Assistance (CBA) cooperative agreement, NASTAD released a Billing Coding Guide for HIV Prevention: PrEP, Screening, and Linkage Services. The guide, developed in collaboration with a coding consultant and the HIV Medicine Association, was updated in 2018. It assists health departments and other providers (such as health centers!) to navigate billing and reimbursement for HIV prevention services.

Bright Spots in HIV Screening

Since 2020, health centers have reported the HIV Screening clinical quality measure on the UDS. HITEQ hosted discussions with health centers in fall of 2021 to find out how they have made progress on this clinical quality measure and gleaned tips from these participants which can be found within.

FY2020 Primary Care HIV Prevention Reporting

To support Primary Care HIV Prevention funded health centers, HITEQ has prepared a crosswalk that maps PCHP tri-annual reporting metrics to UDS measures and/ or fields. This assists health centers in leveraging UDS reporting functionality in their EHRs to inform completion of the tri-annual progress report to HRSA.

Implementing Opt-Out HIV Screening in Your Health Center

HIV testing is one of the many ways we can End the HIV Epidemic. HITEQ's latest blogs offers strategies for leveraging your EHR to make HIV screening a breeze at your health center.

Nationwide HIV-related Care Interactive Infographics

In the 2020 UDS, United States health centers reported 4,984,733 of their 15,485,847 eligible medical patients (32.2%) were tested for HIV at least once after their 15th birthday and before their 66th birthday..

Preparing for CY2020 UDS HIV Reporting

Community health centers have an important role in ending the HIV epidemic. In alignment with that important role, several UDS measures related to HIV screening, treatment, and prevention have been added for CY2020 UDS reporting.

Resources for Expanding PrEP Services in your Health Center

HITEQ compiled this resource library for health centers, which houses actionable PrEP resources including checklists, pocket guides, and billing guidance. This curated set of resources aims to assist health centers in accessing those resources that directly address current PrEP challenges.

State-level HIV-related Infographics

These interactive infographics include HIV Indicators as well as information about underserved populations and patients who may be at increased risk of acquiring HIV, at the state level. Select your state in the upper right to get started.

TelePrEP

According to the Rural health Information Hub, the risk of contracting HIV can be greatly reduced through Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), but the medication must be taken every day and patients need follow-up appointments every 3 months. Some patients often don't have access to it due to stigma, distance from the nearest specialist, and a shortage of primary care providers willing to prescribe and monitor PrEP.

TelePrEP for Health Centers

This brief presents an overview of how health centers can utilize telehealth for PrEP access, or TelePrEP, for comprehensive care, and includes innovations and resources that health centers can utilize to extend these services to their patient populations.

Acknowledgements

This resource collection was compiled by the HITEQ staff with portions contributed by Chris Espersen, HITEQ Advisory Committee member and Independent Contractor and Past President of Midwest Clinicians Network; Shane McBride, Independent Contractor and Past Vice President of Quality and Clinical Systems at South End Community Health Center; Chris Grasso, Associate Director for Informatics & Data Services- The Fenway Institute; and Ed Phippen, Principal - Phippen Consulting, LLC.

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Improving the U.S. health care system requires four aims: improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, reducing per capita costs and improving care team well-being. HITEQ Center resources seek to provide content and direction aligned with the goals of the Quadruple Aim

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