The Department of the Army Social Work Service Management Information System (family advocacy)

Abstract

The Social Work Service Management Information System (SWSMIS) is an automated clinical case record and case management system for the Department of the Army and the US Army Medical Command (MEDCOM) Family Advocacy Program (FAP). Development is ongoing at the European Medical Command (ERMC) and moved to the continental United States (CONUS) in August 1998. If accepted by the US Air Force and Navy for consideration by these services, SWSMIS will become a tri-service database. SWSMIS will increase efficiency, minimize rework and improve the quality of patient care in the Family Advocacy, Social Work Service and Medical Social Work programs. It will reside at the Social Work Service within its medical treatment facilities (MTFs). Critical paths for reporting and notification exist to allow clinical providers to focus on patient care while meeting the highly regulated standards for reporting and documenting that are inherent to the family advocacy and social work business environment. SWSMIS will also reduce variation in patient care, maximize the use of resources in service delivery, measure the effectiveness of treatment against patient outcomes, increase the defensibility of clinical and case management methods, challenge anecdotal methods for determining standards of care, and offer solid data on clinical profiles and best-practice methods. It runs on provider workstations linked to an Informix database on a clinic-wide Windows NT 4.0 server in a Windows 95 environment, and meets C2 security accreditation requirements.