Adapting Community Call Centers for Crisis Support
A Model for Home-Based Care and Monitoring
This report describes a model to enable community health call centers to support home-management and shelter-in-place approaches in mass casualty or public health emergency events. Community health call centers include poison control centers, nurse advice lines, and other hotlines.
Background
To guide call centers in adapting for emergencies, a model called the Health Emergency Line for the Public (HELP) was developed that uses interactive response technology to provide public information and decision support related to health events in Colorado. The model was developed by Denver Health under Contract No. 290-00-0014-12 with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
A blueprint for the HELP model is provided in this report along with four fully detailed interactive response applications for the model. The applications allow callers to use their touch-tone phones to automatically retrieve critical information during a public health emergency. The interactive response applications are:
* A quarantine/isolation monitoring application. This application can automatically place calls to individuals in home quarantine during a disease outbreak such as a pandemic influenza to assess their health status. The application reports on those that don't answer so that followup can be conducted.
* A point-of-dispensing locations application. This application can provide callers with locations for drug dispensing sites in their county based on the caller's ZIP Code.
* A drug identification application that can support mass prophylaxis with antibiotic drugs. This application helps callers identify dispensed drugs, provides information on how to take them, and describes potential adverse reactions.
* A library of frequently asked questions that can disseminate health department-approved, up-to-date, consistent, and accurate information to the public and health care providers. This application allows callers to navigate through a library of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to retrieve information relative to their concern.
A Model for Home-Based Care and Monitoring
This report describes a model to enable community health call centers to support home-management and shelter-in-place approaches in mass casualty or public health emergency events. Community health call centers include poison control centers, nurse advice lines, and other hotlines.
Background
To guide call centers in adapting for emergencies, a model called the Health Emergency Line for the Public (HELP) was developed that uses interactive response technology to provide public information and decision support related to health events in Colorado. The model was developed by Denver Health under Contract No. 290-00-0014-12 with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
A blueprint for the HELP model is provided in this report along with four fully detailed interactive response applications for the model. The applications allow callers to use their touch-tone phones to automatically retrieve critical information during a public health emergency. The interactive response applications are:
* A quarantine/isolation monitoring application. This application can automatically place calls to individuals in home quarantine during a disease outbreak such as a pandemic influenza to assess their health status. The application reports on those that don't answer so that followup can be conducted.
* A point-of-dispensing locations application. This application can provide callers with locations for drug dispensing sites in their county based on the caller's ZIP Code.
* A drug identification application that can support mass prophylaxis with antibiotic drugs. This application helps callers identify dispensed drugs, provides information on how to take them, and describes potential adverse reactions.
* A library of frequently asked questions that can disseminate health department-approved, up-to-date, consistent, and accurate information to the public and health care providers. This application allows callers to navigate through a library of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to retrieve information relative to their concern.