What Happened in Vegas - National CHR Triennial a Success!
The 11th Triennial National Association of Community Health Representatives (NACHR) Conference was held in Las Vegas, Nevada at the South Coast Casino from July 31 to August 3, 2006.
The conference was organized by the NACHR Board with conference support and logistics handled by KAT Communications, a consulting group from Bismarck, North Dakota. Financial support was provided by the National CHR Program of the Indian Health Service and the Be Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work initiative of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Though the conference offered a wide variety of learning opportunities, one key message we hope all attendees took home with them is the importance of reporting the valuable work that the CHR accomplishes. In his keynote address Dr. Charles Grim, Director of the Indian Health Service gave all CHRs a clear message.
"Reliable data collection is also a part of your job as CHRs. An important part of providing services to patients is documenting those services. You’ve all heard it said many times in health care that "if it didn’t get written it didn't get done." You may be familiar with the Government Performance Results Act (GPRA) and Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART), which are used to measure federal governmental programs’ effectiveness. Providing accurate patient services data is crucial to producing accurate results on these measures, which can be key factors in congressional funding decisions… [The] improvements on forms and data software will provide more specificity for the patients’ charts, improve administrative workload reporting, and allow CHR program supervisors to use the data you generate to track health care trends in your Tribes. This data can also be used to provide key decision-making information to Tribal leaders and health directors, and to provide foundational statistics to establish health care needs for potential grant proposals."
The NACHR Board is committed to addressing the documentation issue. A new CHR PCC booklet was distributed at the conference. It is hard to determine why our CHRs are not documenting the services they provide. One possibility is that many of us have so much important work to do that we are too busy to do the paperwork that follows it. But documenting is exactly what we need to do in order for our programs to continue providing the services our clients need.
The NACHR Board will be meeting in November to review the survey that was conducted during this year’s conference and choose a site for the 2008 conference based on your suggestions. If you have not yet voiced your opinion, go to www.nachr.net and send your suggestion.
Thanks to all of you for making your conference a success.
What Time Is It?
A poem written for CHRs and read at the 2006 Triennial Conference
They can Come Early, sometimes even late,
But Patients trust them and they will wait,
Time can stand still,
and time can fly,
but the Time is now!
To treasure the services of the CHR’s
for those that gave many years,
CHR’s who have for their patients shed tears,
The Time is now to give Honor,
for those that gave of their time,
for those that offered their hand,
to those clients who couldn’t do for themselves
It is time to Honor the CHR’s,
for the medicine they hold,
it is within their hearts,
where they hold this medicine,
when the need is there,
They give that much needed hug,
The CHR’s are the front lines,
they are in the Communities,
they are in the fields of Health needs
They are the life lines for many of our people,
It is time now to Honor the CHR’s,
For they are the wind beneath our wings,
Honor your CHR.
No matter where they are,
to Indian Country they are Stars,
It is time to Honor CHR’s.
~ Sandra Ortega 2006