Taking Care of Business: A collaboration to define local health department business processes
Publication Date: June 2006
Publisher: Public Health Informatics Institute; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Author(s): Public Health Informatics Institute
Research Area: Health
Type: Report
Abstract:
Local health departments (LHDs) across the country face extraordinary challenges in times of crisis, like Hurricane Katrina, and the activities of public health are highly complex. Information systems are critical tools to assist health departments' response to disasters such as Katrina, which involve many other local, state and federal governmental agencies, as well as health care organizations. State and local public health agencies must have timely, accurate, and appropriate information to effectively serve their communities, to promote health, and to make potentially life-saving decisions that protect the public from health threats.
These growing demands are forcing LHDs to look at their existing information systems and seek solutions in order to move forward. Currently, however, LHDs manage system application decisions (including identifying needs, solution selection, and implementation strategies) independently of each other. No long-term, shared strategy for achieving the vision of interoperable LHDs exists, nor does a formal process to collaborate on system application decisions.
This report describes the six-month project undertaken October 2005 - March 2006 by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the Public Health Informatics Institute (the Institute) to define the business processes—the sets of related tasks designed to produce a specific programmatic (business) result—that cut across all LHDs. Once defined, the business processes would provide the foundation for developing a base set of detailed information system requirements that would meet the needs of all LHDs and serve as a starting point for creating requests for proposals and contracts for building or buying new information systems. With requirements in hand, every LHD would not need to re-create the wheel when it comes to defining their information system needs.