142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

315765
Leveraging the EHR to Build Appropriate Interventions for Obese and Overweight Pediatric Patients in a Rural Primary Care Center

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Monday, November 17, 2014 : 9:10 AM - 9:30 AM

Jill Cochran, PhD, RN-C, FNP , Department of Clinical Science, West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, Lewisburg, WV
Childhood obesity and the resulting co-morbid conditions are a massive burden for primary caregivers in West Virginia and across the nation. Building culturally sensitive clinical interventions to meet population health needs within the confines of time-pressed, complex medical visits presents a multi-factorial challenge. Historically it has been is difficult to accurately assess the demographic characteristics of clinic populations. Fortunately, the use of electronic health records (EHRs) has created a major shift in clinical documentation and ability to routinely collect essential demographic and clinical data. While data for Meaningful Use is increasingly used to evaluate clinical care and outcomes, use of EHR data outside of the Meaningful Use umbrella has not received sufficient attention. This session provides information and experience on the use of EHR data beyond Meaningful Use to obtain demographic characteristics of an obese and overweight pediatric population in a rural primary care center for the purpose of informing appropriate, locally relevant intervention strategies. We find that the breadth and depth of information recorded on each patient can collectively provide valuable information to describe and evaluate the clinic population, identify priority areas to address, and measure change over time. However, the need for attention to data quality, accuracy, and completeness cannot be overstressed. Our application of EHR data to understand the demographic characteristics of this particular patient population highlights the ability to identify target patient populations, uncover critical patient-level and population level outcomes, inform intervention development and implementation, and add value to efforts in quality improvement systems transformation. Use of EHR data outside of the Meaningful Use umbrella needs increased attention in primary care.

Learning Areas:

Communication and informatics
Public health or related nursing
Public health or related research

Learning Objectives:
Formulate methods for extending the value of electronic health record data from patient-level to population-level health. Evaluate the validity of statistics generated from electronic health record analytics tools. Discuss the need for knowledge translation between health analytics and the realities of patient care.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Science at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine where I help to provide care for a rural patient population facing challenging socioeconomic and health conditions.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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