Internship Presentations – MPS in Biomedical and Health Informatics Program

Students in the Professional Science Master’s in Biomedical and Health Informatics Program complete an internship that synthesizes knowledge gleaned from the program curriculum. The purpose of the internship is to expand classroom learning to include “hands-on” experience in health IT.

In this occasion Kate Stabile and Isaac Mcnair will be presenting their internship projects via Zoom.

Titles and abstracts below:

Kaiser Permanente: Population Health Technology Graduate Internship

Presenter: Kate Stabile

Abstract: During a 12 week long summer internship, Kaitlyn Stabile worked as a population health technology clinical analyst at Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser Permanente’s dedication to providing quality health care is fueled by the innovative developments of the Population health technology team, and provided a foundation from hands on experience that can only be gained through industry. From learning the data structure of EPIC software, to Building Interactive Dashboards and Registries directly with Providers, to learning an entirely new programming language, this internship has demonstrated the critical role that Information Technology plays in maintaining a successful Health Care company.

Identification of Pre-Anesthesia Evaluation Modality Data Related to Cataract Surgery, for Use in Comparative Statistical Analysis

Presenter: Isaac Mcnair

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a series of major changes in the healthcare space on a global level, particularly in mode and delivery of care. Within the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), a sizeable increase in the use of telehealth services was seen during the 2020 calendar year1, particularly as telephone consults (TV) and a service known as VA Video Connect (VVC). With such a drastic upswing in telehealth use across the board, many VA providers and patients are discovering the power it holds in terms of convenience, accessibility, financial savings, and overall feasibility.

Understanding the potential of telehealth services integration, the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) Anesthesia Services and Office of Connected Care (OCC) seek to assess the quality of these telehealth modalities as a means of performing pre-anesthesia evaluations on patients undergoing medical procedures requiring the use of anesthesia.

Objectives: Utilize the VHA’s Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW) to identify and create a cohort of patients who have undergone a pre-anesthesia evaluation in preparation for a cataract-related surgery within the Durham VA Health Care System (DVAHCS) between the years of 2010-2021.

Perform a high-level comparative analysis of the different modalities used for the patient pre-anesthesia evaluations of the cohort, as a preliminary step to aid the team of providers from Anesthesia Services and the OCC in their overall assessment of quality of these services.
Methods and Results: Comparative analysis of 3 different pre-anesthesia evaluation modalities (VVC, telephone (TV) consults, F2F consults) was conducted by comparing and contrasting the level of use of each modality, against one another, on a cohort of 9,716 patients who underwent cataract-related surgery between the years of 2010-2021 at the Durham VA Medical Center (Station #: 558). Use of analytics such as patient demographics, geolocation (in reference to main Durham VA Medical Center), and quantity of use of each service over the 10.5-year span, were implemented into the assessment process.

Microsoft’s SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) service served as the primary platform for running data queries against the VHA’s national patient data warehouse, the CDW. Queries ran against the CDW on the patient cohort revealed that, by far, the most commonly used method for pre-anesthesia evaluations was via F2F consults with a total of 17,804 over the 10.5-year period. The year of 2015 saw the highest number overall with 2,355 F2F consults. A total of 0 results was recorded for both VVC and TV consults for the same 10.5-year time period.

Conclusion: While the use of VVC as a telehealth service is on the rise across the nation’s VA systems, there are currently no data to support its use for pre-anesthesia evaluations within the Durham VA Health Care System (DVAHCS) specifically. However, more research into the CDW is needed to assess its general use amongst all departments within the DVAHCS. The patient cohort itself for this defined target population is comprised of mostly married males, above the age of 65 years, who have undergone one or more cataract-related surgery. Based on the statistical analyses performed on the patient cohort and their corresponding pre-anesthesia evaluation modality, F2F appointments are the overwhelmingly preferred method thus far, yet is possibly subject to change with the continued efforts for implementation of telehealth services across the VHA.