California Area Office

Office of Information Technology (OIT)

The California Area IHS, Office of Information Technology (OIT) staff provide technical support to Tribal & Urban Indian health programs and IHS facilities in California. The majority of support provided is for and about the Resource & Patient Management System (RPMS) databases each of our tribal & urban Indian health programs maintain. The replacement for the RPMS system will be implemented over the next several years; for a time the CAO IT staff will support the new EHR and RPMS concurrently.

This site was developed to provide our target audience (California Area RPMS Site Managers & Health Program IT technical staff) information on RPMS support, security and miscellaneous IT resources available for use at each of our California health programs.

What follows is a summarized listing of duties and responsibilities provided by our IT staff to the various IHS / Tribal / Urban (I / T / U) health programs in California: 

Resource & Patient Management System (RPMS)

• Provide support to CA Tribal, Urban Indian and IHS healthcare databases
• RPMS Software Installs & Patch Updates: 50+ clinical and business office packages
  • Graphical User Interface (GUI) Packages
    • Clinical Reporting System (CRS)
    • iCare
    • IHS Clinical Scheduling (GUI Scheduling)
    • Practice Management Application Suite
    • RPMS Behavioral Health System (GUI Behavioral Health)
    • Visual CPHAD (Computerized Public Health Activity Database)
    • Visual Diabetes Management
    • Visual GIS (Generic Interface System)
    • Visual Patient Registration
  • Uni-directional and bi-directional Lab interface
  • Exports of Registration & Visit Data
  • Statistical Analysis - Workload & User Population
  • Training and Training Coordination 

Electronic Health Record (EHR)

• EHR Software Installs & Patch Updates
• EHR Server configuration, installation & troubleshooting 
• VistA Imaging coordination
• Electronic Dental Record (EDR)

Information Security

• Defining & enforcing policy
  • Maintenance and development of Interconnection Security Agreements
  • End user security training
  • Assurance of Federal Information Systems Management Act (FISMA), Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130 compliance
  • Other security policy drivers 
• Incident Response
  • Response to and sequestration of potential security threats
  • Security event forensics 

Office Automation for Federal Sites

• IHS domain user & desktop support
• IHS Windows server support and maintenance
• IHS domain administration
• System wide server and workstation patch and anti-virus deployment 

Telecommunications

• Provide support to CA Tribal, Urban Indian and IHS healthcare programs
  • Coordinate router maintenance & support for outages or connectivity issues
  • Circuit management (orders, disconnects, moves & upgrades)
• Alternate telecommunication services 

Website

• Content Management for California IHS Website and CAO Portal
• Design