Thursday, November 21, 2024
11/21/2024
The Florida/USVI Poison Information Center – Jacksonville, which serves the residents of the US Virgin Islands (USVI) as well as the northern 45 counties of the state of Florida, is seeking to expand on the quality of poison prevention and poisoning emergency management provided by the specially trained staff at the poison center while maintaining our poisoning services on the Poison Help Line to the lay public and health care professionals. Poison centers play and ever-expanding role by providing cost effective poisoning management in the face of newer substances/drugs of abuse, environmental disasters, and public health issues. It is important that poison centers are providing timely, quality, management recommendations by highly trained health care practitioners as well as providing poisoning prevention education. The goal is to reduce poisonings and harms resulting from poisonings by ensuring that individuals can connect to our poison center and obtain expert consultation on preventing and managing poisonings. The overall program objectives are to: 1. Support poisoning prevention activities 2. Provide high quality guidance and information to callers to the Poison Help Line 3. Provide treatment recommendations when poisonings occur 4. Collect high quality data related to poisonings and poisoning outcomes 5. Use data to inform public health and emergency preparedness responses. To accomplish these objectives, we seek to institute several initiatives. For the USVI, a specific poisoning prevention education plan, including on site education, as well as radio, website, and social media educational approaches will be created. To address the other objectives, a quality improvement program addressing health care related exposures and home exposures with regards to appropriateness of patient care provided and documentation in the poison center record will be instituted. Education and involvement of the specialists in poison information is nec essary for appropriate care and documentation, as well as for the Poison Help Line to exist. The Medical Director, Director, Assistant Director, and Education Coordinator time commitment will be vital to the completion of this program. In addition, all antidotal protocols that are sent to the health care facilities, will be updated by the Directors. Another dashboard, evaluating trending items will be utilized to determine areas to provide timely information to the public each week as well as any notifications that are needed to our local Department of Health. Data fields from our electronic medical record are uploaded every few minutes to the National Poison Data System and to our states ESSENCE system. To assess the success of the proposed activities, several modalities will be utilized. Satisfaction surveys will be used for prevention education programs provided in the USVI. Counts of radio events, website and social media interactions will be tracked. Comparisons to previous education and reach will be evaluated. A quality improvement dashboard will culminate all of the issues with regards to documentation and management and will be reviewed quarterly. Education to the staff, focusing on the issues, will be tracked at monthly staff meetings. Abandonment rate will be assessed to determine timely answering of the national Poison Help Line. Misroutes of any calls will be reported to HRSA within a 24-hour time period for evaluation. Usual quarterly reports will track exposure volume, outcomes, call site, management site, follow ups, patient age ranges, and percent of cases from out of state.
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).
