Ryan white title III HIV capacity development and planning grants - sagebrush health services (sagebrush) was established in august 2007 as an infectious disease clinic in the fire mesa area of LAS…

Ryan white title III HIV capacity development and planning grants - sagebrush health services (sagebrush) was established in august 2007 as an infectious disease clinic in the fire mesa area of LAS vegas, nevada, providing medical services to people living with infectious diseases (ID) with a focus on HIV care. Since 2007, sagebrush has continued to grow, providing health services to clients living with HIV. Since its inception, sagebrush has experienced continued growth. With the continued growth sagebrush witnessed a need to serve an underserved population facing personal, social, physical, and mental challenges resulting in non-adherence to medical services. In 2022 sagebrush obtained its 501C and formed a non-profit to assist in the care of the underserved. The agency now provides various specialty care services to the community such as HIV, behavioral health, rheumatology, neurology, infusion care, community outreach services, prep services, a rapid start program for newly diagnosed HIV clients, and other infectious disease care. Currently, sagebrush has a client population of more than 315 HIV-positive clients. Sagebrush saw the need to upgrade to a more robust data collection and reporting system (including EHR electronic health records) and committed to training and education to ensure staff and clients have the most current information available. During this time, IT allowed sagebrush to look at data and investigated challenges some of the clients are experiencing when IT comes to access to care and healthcare needs. IT was not surprising to find the most challenging for clients struggling to maintain adherence to medical care were transportation, and affordability (loss of work, childcare, gas, etc.) LAS vegas has public transportation; however, fire mesa is in an urban area outside of LAS vegas, and even with public transportation time and money are still a challenge for the clients. Covid-19 pushed the medical field into telehealth quickly. Most medical facilities at the time had not participat ED in telehealth and had to develop and implement these programs quickly to ensure the safety, health, and privacy of the clients. Sagebrush was one of these facilities challenged with telehealth and care for their clients. The capacity development funds will assist sagebrush in the implementation of infrastructure development activities to enhance telehealth and behavioral health platforms and capabilities, updating the current EHR to assist in reporting and data collection to ensure sagebrush is providing the most current standard in healthcare for the clients. Our goal is to continue to develop sagebrush's standards of care by providing more accessible healthcare services via telehealth for those challenged with transportation, workplace scheduling, and mobility issues for the aging population, and those dealing with trauma by providing quick access to linkage to medical care for chronic illnesses such as HIV, primary care services, and providing behavioral health services without challenges for clients to health care. With the rush to implement telehealth, many agencies were quick to purchase the basic platforms offered by EHR systems and other websites for medical care. During this process, sagebrush discovered their EHR system did not offer the best practices for their client needs and as aforementioned this allowed administrators to look at data and investigated challenges some of the clients were experiencing when accessing medical care and other healthcare needs. Sagebrush decided to change to a more efficient EHR (veradigm) that meets the needs of their clients and funders for reporting after reviewing previous reports and data. During this process, sagebrush discovered the EHR new system (veradigm) was able to implement a more secure telehealth platform (follow my health). The telehealth platform will streamline many of the processes found to be a challenge to medical care and gaps in care due to the process of scheduling a telehealth appointment with t he previous platform