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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
Health Center Health IT/ EHR Assessment Tool

Health Center Health IT/ EHR Assessment Tool

For PCAs and HCCNs to Assess Health IT across Multiple Health Centers; Updated in 2019

HITEQ created this template to assist HCCNs, PCAs, or other organizations in conducting health IT assessments of multiple health centers. The questions within this instrument were adopted from proposed UDS health IT capabilities questions and the HITEQ Center's Meaningful Use readiness assessment survey. This instrument may include some questions that are more comprehensive than some organizations need, but a secondary goal is to ease future responses to UDS and other health IT-related surveys.

  • The 1st tab (Introduction) is an introduction and general instructions for this instrument. 
  • The 2nd tab (A. Basic Info) captures basic information that describes each health center. 
  • The 3rd tab (B. CMS EHR Incentive Program) consolidates questions needed to plan for, assess, and respond to CMS EHR Incentive Program.
  • The 4th tab (C. Reporting) focuses on functionalities and abilities to create reports for both internal and external use. 
  • The 5th tab (D. HIE) enumerates interoperability-related functionalities and environment. 
  • The 6th tab (E. Patient Access) captures several areas related to patient access to financial and clinical information, including Patient Portal. 

How to use this tool:

  1. You may choose to start by viewing the videos linked above, or in the links section below.
  2. This tool is formatted with questions (and descriptions of expected responses) in Column A. Each sheet is pre-formatted for up to 5 health centers (Column B to F), and organizations surveying more than 5 health centers can simply cut and paste additional columns as needed.
  3. A potential usage scenario is for the organization (HCCN, PCA,etc.) to instruct each health center to complete the survey using column B. The organization can then collect completed surveys and simply cut and paste responses from each health center into a different column.
  4. The user is expected to respond to all the cell with the LIGHT ORANGE background. For your convenience, all other cells are blocked from writing. Should you need to unlock the spreadsheet for edits, the password is HITEQ.
  5. Please note that some questions in sections C, D, and E have corresponding questions in section B, CMS EHR Incentive Program., and should be answered there.
  6. Some cells are limited to appropriate answer types for your convenience (e.g., >=0, date ranges, Y/N, etc.)

Download the tool below. Please contact HITEQ to request support in implementing this instrument; we are looking for additional opportunities to test this instrument and provide technical assistance at no cost. We also welcome any feedback you have!

Documents to download

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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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Quadruple Aim

A Conceptual Framework

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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