Grant money from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will allow the National Technology Transfer Center’s HEALTHeWV program to see what effects the use of electronic medical records tracking will have on residents in Southern WV who suffer from diabetes.

Wheeling Jesuit University’s National Technology Transfer Center has received a research grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX06AD22G) to implement Electronic Health Records (EHR’s) in rural, medically underserved communities of West Virginia – the initiative is entitled HEALTHeWV (HeWV). Built upon the Army’s award-winning HEALTHeFORCES program, HeWV was designed to improve the health of West Virginia communities. HeWV allows patients residing in even the most remote areas of the state to receive the same quality care as their urban counterparts. Rural providers would have immediate access to complete health records, patient educational materials and medical best practices. HeWV provides a way for medical personnel to electronically track the progress of chronic disease patients against national benchmarks or against patient specific goals. These are just a few of the benefits that the HeWV program provides.

“Implementing an EMR is an opportunity and a challenge”, says Craig Robinson, Executive Director of Cabin Creek Health Systems. “It is an opportunity to revise processes to improve care and it is a challenge because the staff must learn a new way of recording and managing information. HeWV organizes and presents information to medical providers in a way that promotes efficient clinical decision making. It also provides the opportunity for expanding the role of nurses and medical assistants in collecting and recording clinical data. However, it does require significant management attention to process design, training, and creating opportunities for discussion and problem solving.”

West Virginia leads the nation in the incidence of many chronic disease conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. In 2009, West Virginia ranks number 1 in the nation for the number of cases of diabetes with 11.6 % of the residents (approximately 256,000 people) diagnosed with the condition and many more who do not even know that they have the disease. West Virginians have also experienced higher prevalence rates of co-morbid conditions such as obesity, physical inactivity and hypertension.

Access to diabetes education, care and management is limited and/or non-existent in many rural areas of West Virginia. People who are poor, undereducated and live in rural areas are therefore more likely to have devastating diabetes consequences. The social, psychological, physical and economic costs associated with diabetes create a burden for individuals, families, the state and the nation.

A portion of the NASA research grant will focus on studying the effects of using Electronic Health Records in clinical practice on the health outcomes of diabetic patients. The study was designed to measure the impact of Electronic Medical Records containing a diabetic disease registry in the health outcomes of patients with diabetes. The study will revolve around comparing pre-test data (using paper medical records) with the post-test data (using Electronic Medical Records with diabetic registries) against the national benchmark diabetic health outcomes measures (data).

The diabetic health outcomes measures from HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set - a national benchmark measure for diabetes) are chosen as the dependent variables for the study. HEDIS is a widely used set of performance measures in the health care industry, developed and maintained by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

A one year data set on the above health outcomes measures will be collected from clinics before the implementation of Electronic Medical Records and will act as a baseline. Another one year data set will be collected after implementation of the Electronic Medical Records allowing these two data sets to be compared. The results will show the effectiveness of Electronic Medical Records and disease registry against paper-based medical records.

The study is being led by Kathy Platter, Manager of Health Applications and Clinical Services, under the direction of Mazharullah Shaik, M.D., Executive Director of Health Technology Programs at Wheeling Jesuit University. The study is expected to be completed by the end of March 2010 while the results are expected to be published by May 2010. For more information on HEALTHeWV initiatives, please or at 304-243-4375.