2007 Annual Performance Report

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Section 1: Executive Summary

The purpose of the legislation that established the Title III-A program is to "improve the academic quality, institutional management, and fiscal stability of eligible institutions, in order to increase their self-sufficiency and strengthen their capacity to make a substantial contribution to the higher education resources of the Nation."

A. This section summarizes how the grant enabled the institution to fulfill the legislative intent of the Title III-A program.

1. The impact of the Title III-A grant on the institution's capacity to contribute to fulfilling the goals of the legislation.

As a result of progressive and persistent leadership at the federal level, the pace of EHR implementations in healthcare organizations across the nation continues to gain momentum. In addition, numerous state initiatives focused on EHR adoption have gained legislative and public support. Minnesota's e-Health Initiative is one example, and, in September 2007, Minnesota's Governor Tim Pawlenty declared that all healthcare provider settings adopt interoperable EHRs by the beginning of 2015: a vision that is in line with President Bush's of having EHRs for all Americans by 2014.

In 2006, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) jointly produced a work force report ("Building the Work Force for Health Information Transformation") which asserts that "a work force capable of innovating, implementing, and using health communications and information technology (IT) will be critical to healthcare's success." Most certainly, one of those information technologies increasingly being used by all clinical and administrative practitioners in healthcare is the electronic health record (EHR). Health professions' curricula enhanced by hands-on use of an EHR as a teaching/learning tool contribute to the development of this newly required competence for the nation's future healthcare workforce.

In Year 5 (2006-2007), The College of St. Scholastica's Title III grant continued its focus on improving the quality of its health professions' academic programs by: a) implementing an educational version of an electronic health record (EHR) system, b) infusing its use as a professional practice tool into the students' experience, and c) extending access to the ATHENS EHR system to other colleges through a subscription service.

Specifically in Year 5, this Title III funded project effort was devoted to a continual growth in the use of the ATHENS EHR system as a teaching/learning tool by increasing the number of faculty involved in planning for and using it, the number of courses it was used in, adding to the clinical case and knowledge resources built into the EHR systems, as well as increasing the volume and frequency of usage with students in each of six academic programs. In addition to enhancing the work force readiness and competence of the health professions' students through hands-on use of EHRs in their programs, the use of this state-of-the-art information technology also attracted increased enrollments in the College's health professions' programs and led to increased financial stability for the College.

By supporting the development of this new ATHENS model for health professions' education at The College of St. Scholastica, this Title III grant has allowed the College and the ATHENS subscribing colleges to make a substantial "contribution to the higher education resources of the Nation" by preparing a new health professions' work force that is indeed capable of using health communications and information technology and contributing to the quality and efficiency of our healthcare system.

2. How has the grant helped to carry out the mission of the institution?

The College's mission is to "provide intellectual and moral preparation for responsible living and meaningful work." It includes "a special commitment to recognize changes in the needs of society and to brings its mission to the people of the region through relevant programs and services" and to educate students who are "learning to touch the world." As the AHIMA/AMIA joint work force report (2006) advocates a "need for educational curricula and learning environments that fully reflect the electronic environments in which health professionals will practice" in the near future, and with nearly 50% of the College's student body enrolled in health professions programs, the Title III grant is helping the College achieve its most basic mission by creating a new model for health professions' education that assures graduates from all of its health professions' programs will enter the healthcare workplace confident and professionally competent to practice using these robust electronic health information systems to enhance the quality and efficiency of their services and outcomes: "to touch the world" in which they will be practicing.

Throughout 2006-2007, the ATHENS Project continued to stimulate discussions at the Executive and Board of Trustee levels of the College. The President, President's Staff, and the Trustees were especially interested in the impact the project is having on raising the visibility of the College's programs and in achieving national recognition of its academic leadership in responding to the nation's recent call for informatics preparation in all of health professions' programs. The Board of Trustees continues to support The Center for Healthcare Innovation, a new unit of the College founded initially to provide an organizational home for the ATHENS related subscription service, which will extend accessibility to the ATHENS EHR system to other colleges and universities on a contracted basis. Additionally, the Center will evolve to serve as a community resource for education services, research and/or project collaborations, and public policy discussions in the healthcare delivery domain.

As a result of these ongoing discussions at the Executive and Board of Trustees levels relating to the ATHENS Project and the project's linkage into the work force needs related to health informatics competencies, the College's Executive leadership made a decision in Fall 2007 to designate the Health Informatics and Information Management graduate program as one of strategic importance as the College seeks to grow its distance-based student population. This means that the College is now preparing through it 2008-2009 budgeting process to infuse new resources into attracting additional faculty and a marketing initiative that will attract a broader profile of adult students into the HIM graduate program or its graduate level certificate programs: health informatics, nursing informatics, revenue management, EHR strategies, and health information project management.

The Title III grant has helped St. Scholastica advance its basic mission by supporting the strengthening of academic programming and the College's ability to sustain the quality of its health professions' education in times of significant transformation in the healthcare industry being driven by the infusion of health information technologies.

B. The following information documents the institution's experience with the grant as reported during the current reporting period.

If your institution has experienced any unexpected outcomes as a result of this grant, that affect for better or worse its capacity to fulfill the goals of the legislation, tell us about them here.

Within the 2006-2007 academic year, health professions' faculty have presented the ATHENS Project at six (6) conferences, have submitted two ATHENS related articles for publication in juried nursing related journals scheduled for publication in January 2008, and have written a textbook to support the introduction to EHRs in curricula for associate degree level allied health programs which is scheduled for publication in 2008.

In addition, as a result of their efforts with the ATHENS Project, faculty have gained and sustained active participation in Minnesota state and local e-Health activities (for example, the Northeast Minnesota Regional Health Information Collaborative and the MN e-Health Initiative Education and Communication Working Group), in the ambulatory EHR working group of the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), and in the nursing profession's new Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) initiative.

Health professions' faculty have also engaged in Webinar sessions with faculty from other colleges and universities in Wisconsin and Minnesota as they prepared to begin using the ATHENS EHR system in their respective health professions' programs under a subscriber agreement with the College's Center for Healthcare Innovation.

Each of these activities has contributed in a very positive way to Title III's mission related to "advancing the quality of the nation's educational resources" by extending the ATHENS model for curriculum innovation in health professions' education into the broader academic community of colleges and professional associations. In this way, those institutions can also begin to formulate a strategy for engaging their educational resources to meet the significant work force challenge facing healthcare as it is transformed through health information technologies.

Has the grant facilitated or contributed to bringing additional resources to your institution, for example, new Federal, State, or local dollars that can be attributed partly to your grant activities?

Over the past year, two additional grant-funded projects with their roots tied to this Title III project (The ATHENS Project) were in process at the College.

First, a 3M Vision Grant was initially funded in 2005 to support the development of a community-based personal health record (PHR) by involving faculty and students working collaboratively with three (3) targeted consumer populations: one population each year for three years. In 2006-2007, the project was initiated with a collaborative team involving faculty and students from the College's Health Information Management and Social Work programs, a project manager from the Community Health Information Collaborative (CHIC), staff from Udac (an employer of developmentally disabled adults), and staff from a local residential facility for developmentally disabled adults. The resulting population-specific PHR has been developed and pilot tested for use by Udac, the residential facility, and local clinicians engaged in the care of individuals in this developmentally disabled population. Full implementation of the PHR is yet to be achieved. In the meantime, an elderly population has been selected as the focus of this 3M Vision Grant PHR project in 2007-2008.

Second, a grant from the American Health Information Management Association's Foundation of Research and Education (FORE) to The Center for Healthcare Innovation provided seed funding for an HIM Researcher Training Program. The first on-site session of this program was held on the St. Scholastica campus in August 2007 and the second on-site session is schedule for August 2008. A proposal to obtain supplemental funding to FORE's funding in order to bring a second cohort of trainees into the HIM Researcher Training Program beginning August 2008 was submitted in Fall 2007 to AHRQ through the FORE, as well. Funding decision related to this proposal is expected in Spring 2008.

Section 2: Enrollment by Race and Ethnicity (4-Year Institutions)

Total number of undergraduate student enrollment as of October 15, 2006 and the number of those students who received Pell Grants. These data were initially taken from the IPEDS survey, therefore the IPEDS definition of full-time student is used. [Note: The information was obtained from Part A of the IPEDS Fall Enrollment Survey.]

Enrollment by Race and Ethnicity as of October 15, 2006

Section 2: Enrollment by Age and Gender (4-Year Institutions)

Total number of undergraduate students, by age and gender, enrolled as of the institution's official fall reporting date or as of October 15, 2006 [Note: the information for this table can be obtained from Part B of the IPEDS Fall Enrollment Survey for the most recent year available]. Because these data are taken from the IPEDS survey, IPEDS definitions for full-time and part-time students are used.

Enrollment by Age and Gender as of October 15, 2006

Section 2: Degrees Awarded by Race, Ethnicity, and Discipline

Data for this section is for degrees conferred between July 1, 2006 and June 3, 2007 by race, ethnicity, and discipline for students in undergraduate programs only. The CIP (Classification of Instructional Programs) codes were used in designating students appropriately.

Degrees Awarded by Race, Ethnicity, and Selected Disciplines