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BACKGROUND: More than 50,000 refugees come to the United States annually and about 4,000 of them are relocated to New York. A refugee health program was established in New York in 1980 to provide health assessments to refugees and provide contracts with health care providers to perform assessments as refugees arrive in NY. The goals of the refugee health program are to ensure refugees are healthy enough to work or attend school, protect the public from communicable disease and assist refugees in entering the US healthcare system.
METHODS: New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) has developed a Refugee Health Assessment System (RHA) module linked with the Communicable Disease Electronic Surveillance System (CDESS), an electronic disease case reporting and investigation system. The RHA has been developed to monitor medical conditions identified post-arrival and to ensure adequate follow-up of refugees with known medical conditions and the provision of necessary immunizations. Health care providers receive direct financial reimbursement from the NYSDOH Refugee Health Program for conducting health assessments of refugees. The RHA system allows providers to generate vouchers for reimbursement; and allows users to query, download, and generate reports.
RESULTS: The RHA system allows refugee health program staff to upload pre-arrival health and demographic data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Electronic Disease Notification System (EDM), and update refugee demographic and physical examination information, medical history, and refugee health assessment data for each refugee. The system also provides the ability for staff to query and create reports and provides the ability for contracted providers to access patient information for those they serve.
CONCLUSIONS: The integration of financial vouchering and reimbursement of health assessments provide contracted providers a secure, electronic environment for managing program activities. The module increases NYSDOH’s ability to provide timely, accurate, and consistent information to the public, local health departments and healthcare practitioners regarding refugee health. The system will also maintain the providers’ annual contract values and allow them to submit claims for each contract year.