Thursday, November 21, 2024
11/21/2024
Needs to be addressed: Since 1957, the UNYPC mission has been to assist the medical community and the public with toxicologic emergencies by providing state of the art management expertise. The UNYPC faces several obstacles daily to prevent us from fully reaching our goals. One of the major obstacles we face is the large geographic area we serve. Covering 54 counties in New York State, much of the population that inhabits our service area do not adequately know of the services that we provide. 44 out of our 54 counties are considered rural with many people facing health disparities including low socioeconomic status and a lack of resources. They do not know about the resources of the poison center and the services we may provide. Awareness of poison center services is derived from the number of calls per 1000 population served. The overall number of 7 is a desired goal and is not met by our center for several counties. This indicates the need for an increase in education and outreach targeted to the public and healthcare providers. See attachment for county penetrance data for January 1, 2023, through March 31, 2024. Less than 10 of our 54 counties fall below the acceptable 7 calls/1000 population. This program will allow us to increase our resources to travel to and target areas of low penetrance. In addition to the large geographic region, we have several areas where English is not the first language of many within a community. Immigrants from other countries do not know what a poison center is and do not feel comfortable with contacting a poison center. Because of this, they are underserved. This program will let us work with community agencies to target these underserved communities and create educational content in a way understood by their language and culture. This program will help to increase the number of positions so that we can target the communities that are especially distant from Syracuse NY (New York). It will also help to supp ort travel to reach this large geographic region. This program will also help to support the outreach efforts geared towards healthcare professionals throughout the catchment area. Providing high quality clinical care and high-quality data to support caring for the acutely poisoned patient is a pillar of the poison center. This program will support a clinical toxicologist to focus on quality initiatives at our center. These quality initiatives may include: education of our poison information specialists to ensure they maintain the highest level of education to provide high quality guidance and information to callers of the poison help line; initiatives to ensure that patients meeting follow up criteria are receiving the most up to date information and initiatives to ensure that data entered into the National Poison Data System is accurate and complete. This program will help support this by providing support to fund a clinical toxicologist to serve in the role of director of quality services. Additionally, the medical director is responsible for ensuring the highest level of clinical care and providing back-up support 24/7 to the poison information specialists. The medical director cannot be on call for the poison center every day and thus, additional support from toxicologists to be on call for the poison center is critical. This program will support the toxicologists that support the poison center. Data analysis and interpretation is critical to recognize trends to inform public health and the preparedness response. In addition to a rigorous quality program to ensure accuracy of coding, a data analysis support staff will allow for more robust reporting and interpretation of the data. By having a data analysis support staff, the type of reports and data the poison center can obtain will be increased and improved. This will allow us to utilize and share data with our local public health agencies and preparedness teams throughout the state. This program will suppo rt hiring a data anal
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
