case:

The Valley Medical Clinic provides both preventive health and direct health care services to patients who live within an 80-mile distance in the surrounding exurban/rural areas, although it has placed more emphasis on curative rather than preventive services. Recently, the management of the clinic has decided to increase emphasis on the delivery of preventive services to patients, offering a dedicated wellness clinic. The current clinic uses a basic EHR, it does not use technology for preventive care assessment, delivery of preventive services, preventive care reminders, or preventive care auditing. Management has decided to invest several million dollars in acquiring new health information technology in order to improve preventive care services.

Questions:

1. List some of the factors that may have led the Valley Medical Clinic to concentrate on the delivery of curative services, rather than preventive services, to patients in the past.

2. What kind of health information technology can help the clinic to deliver preventive health services more efficiently during a 15-minute clinical visit by a patient?

3. Explain how the use of the following computerized applications could help the clinic to lower the costs of preventive care assessment while improving its efficiency and effectiveness: (a) Comprehensive EHR (b) Computerized health risk assessments (c) Interactive voice response systems (d) Patient registry

4. How might a reminder system, either stand-alone or integrated into the EHR, be used to improve their preventive care quality measures?

5. Explain the benefits and limitations that the clinic might face in using m-Health tools to facilitate preventive health services.

6. How should preventive health services be structured and planned, given the available technologies?