Hamilton County Adoption – Cincinnati Adoption

I want to tell you about an award-winning collaboration that revolutionized the way child welfare workers and hospitals work together to better care for kids in foster care.

 

We’re so proud to be involved with IDENTITY. It’s a web-based application used to facilitate automated information sharing of healthcare information for youth in agency custody. It helps child welfare workers know more about a child’s healthcare history and it helps doctors more quickly know a child’s medical history.

 

In some situations, kids in care move placements often. With IDENTITY, their healthcare information is available as soon as they arrive in the new location so they don’t miss therapy appointments, for example, and their correct prescriptions are known.

 

We worked with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to develop the program and implemented it in 2018. We won a National Association of Counties Achievement Award for it last year. Now, IDENTITY is featured in the Children and Youth Services Review. The article, co-authored by our Kris Flinchum, examines the use and impact of the data sharing.

 

Here’s the really great part – the program expanded to Montgomery County and Dayton Children’s Hospital last year. And officials in Franklin and Summit counties are considering joining in, as are other children’s hospitals.

 

Homegrown collaboration can lead to widening collaborations and help even more children get the care they need – without interruption.