Technology Is Changing Human Services In Which Of The Following Ways?

June iv, 2014
Health & Homo Services

This is a challenging moment in man services. Needs are increasing at the same time that, for many states and localities, budgets are still smarting from the Great Recession. While at that place is no argent bullet solution for human services agencies seeking to maximize their ability to answer to surges in demand, there are emerging tools that can make a deviation.

Technology represents i such opportunity. Only as innovative information technology has revolutionized commercial and social life, so, likewise, exercise new approaches to enterprise applied science have the potential to assistance land and local man services agencies do their piece of work more efficiently and effectively in the years to come.

Subsequently speaking to over 100 hundred experts and stakeholders involved in human being services and technology for our new written report, Gaining Ground: A Guide to Facilitating Engineering science Innovation in Human Services, we encountered dozens of examples of how successful technology innovation can reshape human services for the meliorate. Across these examples, five specific kinds of benefits conferred by technology emerged: Automation, Integration, Empowerment, Assay, and Accountability.

Automation: Reducing Inefficiencies, Enhancing Services

Technology presents the opportunity for program administrators to remove inefficiencies in workflow, allowing staff to focus more on the provision of services and benefits to needy families. This tin be accomplished through various approaches to automating programmatic and administrative functions. For example, the Idaho Section of Health and Welfare – in implementing a 'no wrong door' service delivery model – developed an advanced telephone organisation which automatically routes calls to personnel across the state, directing callers to the caseworker best able to provide assistance. In Olmsted County, Minnesota, county administrators have automatic cadre administrative functions, such as travel reimbursements, as part of the LEAP (Lean Engineered and Automated Processes) initiative, allowing county employees to spend more time performing core programmatic functions. These efforts accept been guided past kaizen process review practices, which focus on incremental opportunities to streamline workflow.

In improver to supporting more efficient work and business practices, technology tin simply automate routine practices. In Florida, the Department of Children and Families has adult and deployed vocalization recognition software, which assists caseworkers in the field by automatically transcribing instance interviews. Similar tools too enable self-service, allowing clients to renew benefits and check applications without requiring in-person assistance. Another example is the New Jersey Division of Taxation'southward express-lane eligibility check, automatically finding tax information on individuals to determine eligibility for Medicaid and SNAP benefits and sending notices encouraging eligible, unenrolled residents to utilize for these benefits. This process is similar to efforts undertaken in Louisiana, Alabama, and Iowa.

Integration: Giving Workers the Total Moving picture

Many states and localities accept recognized that effective human being services commitment and benefits provision requires a more constructive flow of data among and between diverse programs and offices. Tools that facilitate integration typically assist caseworkers past providing a holistic, cross-plan view of client information. In this way, technology tin assistance states and localities in collaborative service delivery. An example of this emphasis can be found in Bedrock Canton, where integrated case management tools allow employees in the county's Department of Housing and Homo Services to track their clients across services. These case management tools also let caseworkers to easily refer families to other canton-administered benefits and services, and to create a more than seamless feel for clients.

Every bit San Diego County undertakes its Live Well San Diego initiative to create a more proactive human services commitment system, technology tools play a key role in integrating practise. For instance, a community-based care transitions plan (CCTP) relies upon a technology infrastructure to share patient data among hospitals, community service providers, and caretakers, improving intendance transitions from hospitals to the dwelling and reducing hospital readmissions for medically and socially complex patients. A similar tool in New York City, called Worker Connect, enables users with role based access the ability to identify how clients take interacted with various New York City Health and Human Service agencies. Users are able to access bureau data in order to increment service delivery and better client and worker experience.

Empowerment: Providing Clients Greater Command

Innovative technology tools can help homo services agencies to streamline the process of obtaining needed benefits and services, just they can too directly empower individual clients equally well as families by allowing them to manage benefits and services according to their own schedules and from the privacy of their ain homes. This has the potential to ameliorate access to benefits and can remove some of the stigma and burdens traditionally associated with public benefits and services. For instance, the Washington Connection benefits portal allows users to screen for eligibility for federal, state, and local benefits, apply for benefits such equally health care, SNAP, TANF, and child intendance, and submit renewals and change in circumstances. Clients may create their own Client Benefit Account for boosted access to information virtually their case.

Engineering tools accept also enabled agencies to improve serve long-marginalized groups. In Minnesota, state officials developed the Autism Assistance app, which enables individuals with autism to communicate with and obtain necessary services – particularly in emergency situations – through colour-coded communications. Similarly, the New Mexico Section of Public Health'south Projection ECHO initiative reaches hepatitis C patients in isolated parts of the state. The projection has developed a teleconferencing infrastructure which allows patients to access medical assistance and clinics which might otherwise accept been inaccessible to residents located in rural areas.

Mobile technology is making a difference as well. With the help of a local university, New York'south Office of Children and Family Services obtained and deployed mobile technology such equally laptops, permitting staff to access data needed to assist clients while out in the field. These tools can allow caseworkers to spend more than time with their clients, rather than existence tethered to a desk-bound. Similarly, the Arkansas Department of Higher Education developed a smartphone app, called YOUniversal, which allows students to determine eligibility for land scholarships, and even submit applications.

Analysis: Evaluating Effectiveness

Using engineering, human services administrators, supervisors, managers, and frontline staff can gain access to data that helps them understand their clients at both the individual and population levels and that allows them to rails and evaluate programme performance. These innovations typically aid high-level program administrators in controlling through data aggregation and analytics, allowing them to assess program operation, uncover long-term trends, and develop possible improvements. A lauded success story is Allegheny County's Data Warehouse (Pennsylvania). The county's Department of Human Services has developed numerous search queries to clarify data, enriching the data bachelor to both administrators and third-party researchers, including those at local foundations and universities.

Improved analytical capabilities tin can too allow agencies to identify and implement more effective services for clients. In Oklahoma, as part of the SoonerCare (Medicaid) program, officials analyzed patient data including comorbidity factors to identify individuals decumbent to poor health outcomes. Equipped with a list of at-take chances Medicaid recipients, managers accept worked to sign these individuals upward for intensive, managed-intendance programs. Meanwhile, the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families developed the Real Connections program, which analyzes data on a child'due south social network. Using this assay of existing data, the Department is able to place mentors best suited to enable the best outcome for each kid.

Accountability: Improving Performance

Technology innovation plays an important office in improving the commitment of homo services and public benefits past building upon analysis to improve transparency around programme operation. Applied science innovation can be used to better communicate important information to residents and administrators alike, enhancing the scrutiny and decision-making of administrators, elected officials, and the full general public. One example of this opportunity is the California Healthcare Associated Infections map, which emerged from a legislative mandate that the state'southward hospitals publish information on infection rates. The visual presentation of health information in the map increases transparency of the country's network of hospitals, ultimately holding hospitals answerable to the public for delivering safe and effective care for patients.

Similarly, N Carolina officials developed a 'data dashboard,' which uses existing data collected by the Section of Health and Human being Services to compile metrics on programme performance. Every month, the Department releases public reports which present information on family unit outcomes. A carve up Medicaid dashboard also permits the full general public to view financial information. In Arkansas, technology is driving better provider accountability in health care. Partnering with insurance providers in the land, the Department of Human Services launched the Payment Improvement Initiative. This project allows care providers to input payment information, and provides data to providers and insurers alike on the costs and outcomes of care episodes. Providers are even entitled to share in savings when high-quality outcomes are achieved at below-average price.

Leveraging the Opportunity

In that location are many examples of how technology tin help homo services agencies meet key needs. Those listed above are not exhaustive, but they do show the range of specific benefits technology can offer. Agencies seeking to improve operation and outcomes will notice that, while not a panacea, engineering science innovation can be a crucial component of any effort to address needs and better serve individuals and families. Over the adjacent few weeks, we will be highlighting key themes and exploring cases from our research here on Data-Smart Urban center Solutions; check back soon for more.

Source: https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/the-technology-opportunity-for-human-services-470

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