ASIAN PACIFIC HEALTH CARE VENTURE WORKS WITH PACIFICARE/UNITEDHEALTHCARE TO SAFEKEEP PATIENT DATA
Los Angeles, CA (February 2, 2009) – PacifiCare/UnitedHealthcare has awarded Asian Pacific Health Care Venture, Inc. (APHCV) $299,393 to fund APHCV’s “Information Technology Advancement Project for Business Continuity and Electronic Health Record (EHR) Preparedness.” project to increase technological capacity for disaster response and data security.
APHCV has been developing its information technology (IT) infrastructure to better prepare for disasters, protect patient and health care information, and to meet patients and communities’ needs following natural and human disasters. Previous efforts include working with state and local clinic associations through the Clinic Emergency Preparedness Project to develop emergency management tools and strategies. Additionally, APHCV installed a 53KW solar energy and emergency battery system to, not only, become a green facility but to be able to continue services in the event of a power outage.
APHCV is the only provider in its service area that has the on-site language capacity to serve the surrounding monolingual API and Latino communities. In the event of a disaster, local communities will rely on APHCV for medical services. Funds from PacifiCare/UnitedHealthcare will further APHCV’s disaster response capability by creating a system which protects patient and organization information and retrieves it in a timely matter. APHCV’s IT infrastructure will be stabilized and streamlined with the installation of virtualization servers and Storage Area Network. Virtualization will transfer application servers from physical to virtual servers that will lower power and memory usage. Software, hardware, operating system, and corresponding data will become one component, making disaster recovery easier than if each component had to be restored separately. A Storage Area Network will set up a centralized storage location for the virtual servers and their data while configuring replication to an off-site disaster recovery site. This provides redundant backup of clinic data at a disaster recovery site that is a significant distance from APHCV. In addition to improved disaster recovery capabilities, this IT infrastructure will allow APHCV to take on additional health information technology initiatives, such as becoming technically ready for electronic health record implementation.
www.aphcv.org) located in Hollywood and serving the greater Los Angeles area, is a Federally Qualified Health Center that provides culturally competent health education and primary care services to 11,000 patients annually, more than 75% of whom are uninsured. APHCV provided 45,000 medical and mental health visits last year in multiple Asian languages (Bengali, Cantonese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Indonesian, Mandarin, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu, and Vietnamese), English and Spanish. APHCV can be reached at (323) 644-3880. Medical appointments can be made by calling (323) 644-3888.
