The Orange County Health Department (OCHD) has received 7 different awards for its work to be productive and innovative to improve services and save money for Florida taxpayers and businesses. OCHD has been awarded 4 Florida Davis Productivity Awards, two National Association of County and City Health Officers (NACCHO) promising practices, and a Downtown Orlando Partnership Award. 

The health department’s Women Infants and Children (WIC) and I.T. programs won a Davis Productivity Award and a NACCHO Promising Practice for a client flow system that helped speed up clinic flow with a new software system called Q-Flow. The system helped WIC see clients in 30 minutes less each day while servicing the same number of clients with 5 less staff members. In addition to financial benefits, the new process resulted in 10% less wait time for clients.

The Immunizations team won a Davis Productivity Award for improvements that sped up processes, reduced waste, and improved services.  The data processing project reduced the number of duplicate client records in state databases, improved vaccine accountability, and increased revenue. 

OCHD’s I.T. and Community Health programs won a Davis Productivity Award as the first county health department to start a mobile website in Florida, www.orchd.mobi.  The website increases access to care/services by providing health information to people who use mobile phones to connect to the internet. An estimated 5 HIV infections were avoided by education and early treatment through the mobi-site, saving more than $90,000 annually in treatment costs.

The Environmental Health program won a Davis Productivity Award for its Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health (PACE-EH) project in unincorporated Apopka. The project helped to improve access and transportation to specialized health care for residents, made fresh produce more available, got more streetlights in neighborhoods, and it was involved in the effort to prevent further creation of landfills in the community. Environmental Health also won a Silver Brick Award for an initiative to promote smoke-free air at bars by conducting indoor air quality tests along with facilities inspections at bars in downtown Orlando.

Emergency Operations was awarded NACCHO a Promising Practice for development of Team BIOFORCE- which provides preparedness training beyond the normal levels given to employees, thus enhancing OCHD’s response efforts to the Orange County Community during a health emergency. This program is not known to exist in any other county health department.