Case Study: Implementing and Integrating Health IT Solutions within a Correctional Environment

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Butler, Ben^{; *}

Affiliations: Community Oriented Correctional Health Services, Oakland, California, United States of America

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Email: bbutler@cochs.org.

Abstract: Correctional environments are not often associated with health care delivery or health information technology (health IT). Nevertheless, a great deal of healthcare occurs within jails and prisons. In many of these institutions, correctional health providers have access to health IT to provide a practical solution to the complex health challenges of justice-involved individuals. This case study will detail how one jail planned and implemented an integrated health IT system that interfaced an electronic health record (EHR) with both the correctional IT system and existing health IT systems, including a pharmacy system and a health information exchange (HIE). These interfaces involved technical challenges unique to corrections that required technical solutions as well as manual solutions, when systems could not be electronically integrated. Health IT also allowed for monitoring of contracted services for healthcare within the correctional facility. As with many technical solutions, health IT in corrections brought with it the possibility of changing correctional healthcare in unanticipated ways.

Keywords: healthcare, jail, prison, EHR, HIE

DOI: 10.3233/jid-2017-0014

Journal: Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 47-57, 2017