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P002: Public Health Division

P002: Total number of visits to School Based Health Centers

Current Value

54,532#

FY 2018

Definition

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Story Behind the Curve

  • Nationally, adolescents rarely seek preventive care from their health care providers. There are, however, numerous chronic health conditions as well as risky behaviors that are founded in adolescence.
  • Improvements to the Office of School and Adolescent Health (OSAH) School Based Health Center (SBHC) Operational Plan have allowed easier data collection and planning for operations so that SBHCs can focus efforts on increasing productivity in their clinics.
  • There were more than 54,000 visits to SBHCs during FY18, exceeding the goal of 48,000 visits across all SBHCs for the year. Semi-annual progress reports are required from each SBHC contractor. This allows an in-depth review of activities by both the contractor and by OSAH and provides an opportunity for course corrections by contractors to ensure they will meet their yearly goals.
  • The OSAH SBHC Clinical Operations Manager offered a monthly Coordinators call to assess successes and challenges for the current year.  The monthly team problem solving approach has allowed for a learning collaborative to improve performance.
  • While visit data is useful for programmatic decisions around adolescent care, this measure does not accurately reflect the energy and resources OSAH staff input into making the SBHC program a success. A better reflection for OSAH performance will be the percentage of SBHCs that meet or exceed their quality improvement goals for the year. This goal will be incorporated as an annual measure for OSAH for next year’s performance measurement.

Partners

  • New Mexico (NM) Alliance for School-Based Health Care
  • University of New Mexico – Envision Health Care Quality Improvement Initiative
  • Apex Evaluation
  • NM Human Services Department and Centennial Care Providers
  • NM Primary Care Association
  • NM Community Health Centers
  • NM Public Education Department
  • NM Children Youth and Families Department
  • NM Behavioral Health Services Division
  • Federally Qualified Health Centers
  • Regional Education Cooperatives
  • Local school districts and school boards

What Works

  • Improving relationships with school administration and providing data on improved academic outcomes associated with the use of school based health centers.
  • Increasing the number of partnerships with community health centers as this sponsorship improves administrative operations, improves fiscal sustainability, and increases the number of visits to school based health centers.

Strategy

  • Continue to partner with medical sponsors of school based health centers to address ongoing needs associated with implementation of school based health center services.

Action Plan

Partner with medical sponsors to provide at least 12,000 school based health care visits each quarter.

  • Q1: 12,000 visits. Not met: provided 6,996 visits.
  • Q2: 24,000 visits. Met.
  • Q3: 36,000 visits. Met. 
  • Q4: 48,000 visits. Met.

FY18 Annual Progress Summary

  • OSAH and its evaluation partner, Apex Education, strived to provide timely feedback to our SBHC sponsors when visit data was missing or incomplete. Our contractors were routinely reminded by both Apex and OSAH when encounter data was missing or incomplete, and ultimately, payment was withheld until this contract deliverable was completed.  
  • Perhaps the biggest impact on the number of visits to school based health centers this year was allowing our SBHC sponsors to run their clinical operations the way they know how, rather than our office dictating that process.  In order to receive funding from OSAH, an integrated model of primary and behavioral health must be followed and a comprehensive risk screen must be completed on every patient. All other details were left up to each sponsor for them to maximize productivity and sustainability of their school based health centers. This flexibility was well received and the result was more than 50,000 visits for the first time since 2011.
     

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