Below is a list of questions submitted by the West Texas AHEC program.  The answers/suggestions from the iAHEC core team are in the red font.  By sharing these via the iAHEC forum, we are hoping to enlighten other programs and/or centers with similar questions. 

• Downloadable worksheets:  2 Resident/Student worksheets for West Texas AHEC.  Can we remove one?  I have removed one of the worksheets. - LT
• Activity Assessment worksheet and reporting on D tables.  When our staff enters Partners on the Activity Assessment worksheet, we’re having trouble getting the D tables to show the actual location of the event.  Ex.  10/11/2006 BDLS activity for the Panhandle AHEC.  South Texas AHEC was the partner hosting that event but the location was Hereford/Deaf Smith County, and so the location shows up on the D tables as Location:  South Texas AHEC and County: Bexar County and hence as urban.  The same is true for a few other events.
• While the Partners drop down allows us to select multiple partners, it does not seem to have any mechanism for us to identify the actual “place” when multiple partners from different locations are involved.  Is it possible to create a separate field for location of the event  - Mouyong will create 2 new fields on the activity assessment worksheet (Event Location & Event County)
• E10A:  Example:  See Big Country’s AHEC’s E10A report for November 2006.  On iAHEC it shows that there were 4 active sites, when actually there were 2.  This is driven by the fact that, for the two rotation sites that month (Family Health Clinic in Eastland and Ballinger Hospital Clinic), the notations on the Organization worksheet denote for each the Site Type as:
• Family Health Clinic:  Medicine
• Ballinger Hospital Clinic:  Medicine, NP, and PA .

In actuality, there was one student placed at each site:  a medical student at Family Health Clinic and PA at Ballinger.  Should the report show two or four? – When ETAHEC created this table it was to capture the # of training sites by discipline of student.  Therefore, it is a duplicated count.  You are able to get an unduplicated count of your current Training Sites on report Table E09:C.

• E9:  Example:  See Panhandle AHEC’s E9 report for calendar year 2006.  I did a review of the just the pharmacy student rotations to find out what the issue may be.  There were 20 students/rotations for that time period. Then I looked at what was checked for each organization under the Site Designation category.  I've listed the breakdown in the table below.

 The 42 that you see for pharmacy students on iAHEC is because for several of the organizations, multiple site designations are checked (as directed, we’ve been checking “all that apply”.  Also note that, if there were no check marks for site designation on the Organization worksheet, those students don't show up on this report.   It appears that the iAHEC E09A report inflates the number of students who actually participated in rotations in these sites.  This is an issue on several of the CBE reports.  Therefore, I will get with Mary & Steve to categorize (by importance of reporting) the site designations.  Mouyong will then fix the reports to capture the sites by using the highest level designation of the site. 

We have also found that many of the site designations are being left blank.  Mouyong will make this a required field, so that at least one designation must be checked.

·        DSCPH2 online does not match what is on that same federal report.  On the federal report, it is a count of the underserved site designations.  On iAHEC, it is a count of the site practice type.  We are currently working to fix and complete the CPMS/UPR reports on iAHEC.

·        Is it possible to create a mechanism for printing report so that you do not have to enter the time period and AHEC center individually for each report?  For example, if I want to run all the HCP reports for Big Country AHEC, can the system be tweaked so that I do that with one command?  Instead of having to do it for each individual table?  Unfortunately, each individual table must be printed separately.   We will consider the “one command” option and get back with you.

·        What reporting mechanism drives the information found on Table DSCPH-4?  Not all of our participants from across the region are showing up on this report.  I’m still researching to try to figure out why.  We are currently working to fix and complete the CPMS/UPR reports on iAHEC.

I wonder if you could forward another issue for us to the folks who manage iAHEC.  We have an organization which is in Amarillo but in Randall County – Amarillo is divided between the two counties; roughly 3/4 in the north is Potter County and 1/4 in the south is Randall.  Potter and Randall Counties are in different state districts, and we correctly entered the representative code for District 86 for the organization (Bible Heritage Christian School) but it came up in iAHEC as Potter County.  Is there some way they could update their database so that the districts are correctly identified by address in Amarillo?  (I have no idea whether the district lines follow any zip code lines.)  The counties in iAHEC are associated with the address entered for the organization (not by the District) and that is how it is displayed.  We are using the state designated counties, so unfortunately, we cannot split the cities by county. 

Thanks – I know this one’s probably a pain!

Liz :)

Could you help me out in understanding what type of information should appear on the activity worksheet when the Community Based Education box should be checked? If I remember correctly from our meeting last week the CBE box is only used for health professions students completing rotations in the community. Therefore, that would then indicate that each student that is doing a rotation with a preceptor should be entered on an activity worksheet, with the CBE box checked, as well as on the B100….right? No – student rotations should only be entered on the B100.  I came to this conclusion by going to the report tab, selecting custom reports (activities) and then selecting area, center and program area. When I entered community based education nothing populated therefore showing no activity. When I checked our other WTX sites some showed no CBE activity or showed activities that should have been checked as practice entry and support since many were a continuing education event. I also checked ETX and found activity that looked like continuing education events and no students listed. South TX showed the same activity under practice entry & support as well as community based education (no students)….thus the confusion. If an activity sheet is suppose to be done for each student participating in a rotation then more information on some of the pull down menus will have to be added which is not difficult to do but you may want to add the right info so that there can be some consistency among the centers. 

Is there a “How To” book that goes along with IAHEC?  We are currently working on the manual and a “cheat sheet”. 

Look forward to your response.

Thank you,

Sue

Sue Raszewski

Administrative Assistant

Big Country Area Health Education Center

841 N. Judge Ely

Abilene, TX 79601

325-793-8484