Damien Center automatically manages licenses, accreditations and more

Indianapolis-based Damien Center “is Indiana’s oldest and largest AIDS service organization (ASO).” The center, founded in 1987, provides healthcare and education to more than 8,000 individuals living with and at risk for HIV. Damien Center is also a Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program grantee, so the clinic receives federal funding to treat and care for those living with HIV who have little or no insurance. The HIV/AIDS Bureau, part of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, administers the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program.

“We wanted one solution to track not only our pharmacy’s regulatory documents, like our DEA license, but also insurance policies and licenses for providers,” says Brad Plunkett, director of Pharmacy Services for Damien Center. “We were using multiple systems to do it.

“We worked with a consultancy, and they had software that automated some of our needs,” Plunkett adds. “I’d heard of LicenseTrak, explored it, and thought, ‘Ok, we can use this across our platforms.’”

Automatically tracking primary source verification and more

With SectyrHub LicenseTrak^® compliance software, Plunkett automated the manual processes Damien Center relied on for primary source verification, including OIG exclusions and sanctions. He says the way employees use the software’s capabilities has grown with Damien Center. Plunkett joined the center in 2020. Since then, the staff has doubled to more than 150 employees. According to Plunkett, LicenseTrak verifies and maintains his coworkers’ licenses. Damien Center’s staff members also use the software to show federal agencies how the organization appropriately spends government dollars on programs. Damien Center can easily document that its workers have successfully completed annual HIPAA training, classes for first responders, and state licensure through the Association of Social Work Boards.

“Using LicenseTrak to manage licenses and continuing education takes some buy-in from employees; but once we gained that, the system has been great,” Plunkett remarks. “The software has a lot of capabilities for reminding our staff about pending training and renewing licenses, so nobody is tasked with constantly sending email.”

Approximately five employees serve as administrators of the system, and the users include members of human resources, pharmacy operations, clinical operations, and other departments.

Achieving accreditation

In 2022, one of Damien Center’s pharmacy benefit management companies required the center to be accredited by the Health Care Accreditation Council. Plunkett says having LicenseTrak in place helped earn HCAC accreditation, in part, because Sectyr loaded the current standards into the accreditation portion of the software. Once added, Damien Center had a comprehensive accreditation task list, including a calendar with action items. By referencing the data in LicenseTrak, Damien Center showed HCAC the clinic had met the requirements and stored all the supporting documents. 

“We even mention LicenseTrak in our policies and procedures, so HCAC knows the system is our way of organizing ourselves and staying updated with licensure and more,” Plunkett says.   

Beyond tracking licenses

Plunkett says Damien Center has gone from tracking licenses to keeping tabs on the gamut of services the center offers. In the last three years, the center’s services expanded from seven to 21, everything from telehealth and housing assistance to a food pantry and rebuilding credit. LicenseTrak’s developers originally created its reporting feature for pharmacy incidents, like misfiling a prescription.

The software’s flexibility has helped Plunkett and his team also capture events like a trip and fall or a conflict between customers. To maintain its HCAC accreditation, Damien Center must respond to and resolve all customer complaints, and Plunket taps LicenseTrak for managing this, too.

“We’re working with Sectyr to adapt the system, so we can log an incident and send the record to a third party asking them to provide more information because they were involved,” says Plunkett. “Our goal is having a rolling detail of accounts from other people included in the history of the incident, so a manager is better able to draw conclusions to close out the incident.”

Anything that has an expiration date is something Damien Center wants to track, so Plunkett is moving a variety of tasks into LicenseTrak. For instance, Plunkett is entering and tracking staff vaccination records with LicenseTrak. Eventually, his plan is for employees to complete training online, prompt a manager to attest to the completed coursework, and catalog it with the system

“LicenseTrak was originally designed for pharmacies,” notes Plunkett. “But it’s configurable enough to be used in a variety of settings, including clinics like ours.”