Browsing by Author "McFarlane, Timothy D."

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    Characterizing Informatics Roles and Needs of Public Health Workers: Results from the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey
    (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2015-11) Dixon, Brian E.; McFarlane, Timothy D.; Dearth, Shandy; Grannis, Shaun J.; Gibson, P. Joseph; Department of Epidemiology, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health
    Objective: To characterize public health workers who specialize in informatics and to assess informatics-related aspects of the work performed by the public health workforce. Methods (Design, Setting, Participants): Using the nationally representative Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS), we characterized and compared responses from informatics, information technology (IT), clinical and laboratory, and other public health science specialists working in state health agencies. Main Outcome Measures: Demographics, income, education, and agency size were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Weighted medians and interquartile ranges were calculated for responses pertaining to job satisfaction, workplace environment, training needs, and informatics-related competencies. Results: Of 10 246 state health workers, we identified 137 (1.3%) informatics specialists and 419 (4.1%) IT specialists. Overall, informatics specialists are younger, but share many common traits with other public health science roles, including positive attitudes toward their contributions to the mission of public health as well as job satisfaction. Informatics specialists differ demographically from IT specialists, and the 2 groups also differ with respect to salary as well as their distribution across agencies of varying size. All groups identified unmet public health and informatics competency needs, particularly limited training necessary to fully utilize technology for their work. Moreover, all groups indicated a need for greater future emphasis on leveraging electronic health information for public health functions. Conclusions: Findings from the PH WINS establish a framework and baseline measurements that can be leveraged to routinely monitor and evaluate the ineludible expansion and maturation of the public health informatics workforce and can also support assessment of the growth and evolution of informatics training needs for the broader field. Ultimately, such routine evaluations have the potential to guide local and national informatics workforce development policy.
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    Leveraging Health Information Exchange to Construct a Registry for Traumatic Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury and Stroke in Indiana
    (2018-04-16) Rahurkar, Saurabh; McFarlane, Timothy D.; Wang, Jane; Hoover, Sarah; Hammond, Flora; Kean, Jacob; Dixon, Brian E.; Epidemiology, School of Public Health
    Traumatic brain injury (TBI), spinal cord injury (SCI) and stroke are conditions of interest to public health as they can result in long-term outcomes and disabilities. Specialized registries can facilitate public health surveillance, however only 4% of hospitals in the United States actively engage in electronic reporting to these registries. We leveraged electronic claims and clinical data from a health information exchange to create a statewide TBI/SCI/Stroke registry to facilitate the study of long-term outcomes and health services utilization. The registry contains 109,943 TBI patients, 9,027 SCI patients and 117,084 stroke patients with a mean of 3 years of follow-up data after injury. Additionally, the registry contains data on individual patient encounters, prescriptions and clinical variables. The high-dimensional data with large sample sizes may present a valuable informatics resource for injury research as well as public health surveillance.
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    Public Health Informatics in Local and State Health Agencies: An Update From the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2019-03) McFarlane, Timothy D.; Dixon, Brian E.; Grannis, Shaun J.; Gibson, P. Joseph; Epidemiology, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health
    OBJECTIVE: To characterize public health informatics (PHI) specialists and identify the informatics needs of the public health workforce. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: US local and state health agencies. PARTICIPANTS: Employees from state health agencies central office (SHA-COs) and local health departments (LHDs) participating in the 2017 Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS). We characterized and compared the job roles for self-reported PHI, "information technology specialist or information system manager" (IT/IS), "public health science" (PHS), and "clinical and laboratory" workers. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Descriptive statistics for demographics, income, education, public health experience, program area, job satisfaction, and workplace environment, as well as data and informatics skills and needs. RESULTS: A total of 17 136 SHA-CO and 26 533 LHD employees participated in the survey. PHI specialist was self-reported as a job role among 1.1% and 0.3% of SHA-CO and LHD employees. The PHI segment most closely resembled PHS employees but had less public health experience and had lower salaries. Overall, fewer than one-third of PHI specialists reported working in an informatics program area, often supporting epidemiology and surveillance, vital records, and communicable disease. Compared with PH WINS 2014, current PHI respondents' satisfaction with their job and workplace environment moved toward more neutral and negative responses, while the IT/IS, PHS, and clinical and laboratory subgroups shifted toward more positive responses. The PHI specialists were less likely than those in IT/IS, PHS, or clinical and laboratory roles to report gaps in needed data and informatics skills. CONCLUSIONS: The informatics specialists' role continues to be rare in public health agencies, and those filling that role tend to have less public health experience and be less well compensated than staff in other technically focused positions. Significant data and informatics skills gaps persist among the broader public health workforce.
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    Traumatic Brain Injury Surveillance and Research with Electronic Health Records: Building New Capacities
    (2023-03) McFarlane, Timothy D.; Dixon, Brian E.; Malec, James; Vest, Joshua; Wessel, Jennifer
    Between 3.2 and 5.3 million U.S. civilians live with traumatic brain injury (TBI)-related disabilities. Although the post-acute phase of TBI has been recognized as both a discrete disease process and risk factor for chronic conditions, TBI is not recognized as a chronic disease. TBI epidemiology draws upon untimely, incomplete, cross-sectional, administrative datasets. The adoption of electronic health records (EHR) may supplement traditional datasets for public health surveillance and research. Methods Indiana constructed a state-wide clinical TBI registry from longitudinal (2004-2018) EHRs. This dissertation includes three distinct studies to enhance, evaluate, and apply the registry: 1) development and evaluation of a natural language processing algorithm for identification of TBI severity within free-text notes; 2) evaluation and comparison of the performance of the ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM surveillance definitions; and 3) estimating the effect of mild TBI (mTBI) on the risk of post-acute chronic conditions compared to individuals without mTBI. Results Automated extraction of Glasgow Coma Scale from clinical notes was feasible and demonstrated balanced recall and precision (F-scores) for classification of mild (99.8%), moderate (100%), and severe (99.9%) TBI. We observed poor sensitivity for ICD-10-CM TBI surveillance compared to ICD-9-CM (0.212 and 0.601, respectively), resulting in potentially 5-fold underreporting. ICD-10-CM was not statistically equivalent to ICD-9-CM for sensitivity (𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑̂=0.389, 95% CI [0.388,0.405]) or positive predictive value (𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑̂=-0.353, 95% CI [-0.362,-0.344]). Compared to a matched cohort, individuals with mTBI were more likely to be diagnosed with mental health, substance use, neurological, cardiovascular, and endocrine conditions. Conclusion ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM surveillance definitions were not equivalent, and the transition resulted in a underreporting incidence for mTBI. This has direct implications on existing and future TBI registries and the Report to Congress on Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States. The supplementation of state-based trauma registries with structured and unstructured EHR data is effective for studying TBI outcomes. Our findings support the classification of TBI as a chronic disease by funding bodies, which may improve public funding to replace legacy systems to improve standardization, timeliness, and completeness of the epidemiology and post-acute outcomes of TBI.