The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #41586

Nancy M. Pindus, MBA¹, Robin D. Koralek, MPA¹, Jenny R. Bernstein, BA¹, Barbara Selter², and Cheryl Owens². (1) The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037, 202-261-5523, npindus@ui.urban.org, (2) Intelligent Technologies Division, Maximus, Inc., 3204 Tower Oaks Blvd., Suite 200, Rockville, MD 20852

The Health Passport Project (HPP) is an initiative sponsored by the Western Governors’ Association and conducted in Bismarck, North Dakota; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Reno, Nevada. HPP is intended to demonstrate how a secure health card can facilitate information-sharing and improve administrative efficiency among public and private health care providers, nutrition programs, and Head Start educators while placing individuals firmly in control of the information on the card. The Health Passport system consists of a Health Passport card, special card readers attached to the health providers’ personal computer applications or retailers’ in-lane checkout systems, servers to maintain back-up databases, kiosks, and a network. The card contains demographic, medical, and benefit information (for the pilot sites with Women, Infants and Children (WIC) electronic benefits transfer (EBT). We followed the development and implementation of HPP for three years, including site visits, interviews, focus groups, satisfaction surveys, and analysis of HPP server data. The assessment suggests future directions and enhancements that can make HPP more valuable to providers and clients, and that can be applied to other innovative information technologies in service delivery.

Learning Objectives:

1.Articulate ways that smart cards and related technologies can be used to integrate services and involve parents in managing health and nutrition information for their families.
• Understand the challenges and lessons learned from this innovative, but complex, demonstration.

Keywords: Information Technology, Service Integration

Related Web page: www.westgov.org/wga/initiatives/hpp; www.urban.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.