San Diego, California

In the spring of 2010, Alliance Healthcare Foundation awarded $25,000 to the San Diego Fire Rescue Foundation for the development of Electronic Resource Access Program (e-RAP). Cobbweb Associates is the contractor who will complete Phase 1 of the project.

San Diego’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) currently operates the Resource Access Program (RAP), a paper-based data collection program that links EMS, health and human services, psychiatric assessment and homeless outreach in an effort to reduce the use of EMS and hospital resources by a small group of recidivist individuals. Serving this population of mostly poor, homeless and uninsured more efficiently will save tax dollars. However, given the program’s reliance on paper data, RAP is limited in its ability to impact the target population.

The e-RAP will take the RAP program to the next level by creating a computer-based, case management system that has the unique capacity of being utilized by a wide scope of both public and private organization that provide services to this challenging population. Partnering with several other local homeless initiatives, e-RAP will help reduce frequent and often uncompensated use of EMS and hospital resources.