betty and guy beatty center for integrated - Inova Health System

INOVA RESEARCH CENTER( IRC)
The Center for Integrated Research serves as the hub for the decentralized
research conducted across Inova Health System. The Research Hub
supports all Research Spokes (Research Teams) and researchers from
Inova Health System. The administrative component of the Center for Integrated
Research or Inova Research Center (IRC) consists of the Business
Office, IRB Administrative Office, Research Training and Education Office,
Research Quality Improvement Team, Technology Transfer Desk and
Contracting, Database and Support, as well as Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Office. The IRC team of professionals provides support to members
of the research spokes by ensuring all federal, state, and local rules are
followed to generate quality research results that benefit patients, families,
and the organization.
RESEARCH BUSINESS OFFICE
In 2009, the Business Office continued its support to the research spokes
with various financial matters required to conduct research studies. Many
of these routine activities concerned budgeting, financial reporting, processing
research invoices, and developing study matrices. Special attention
has been given to research billing compliance this year. This effort
was overseen in conjunction with the Compliance Department to develop
a process that flags research bills within the financial system. Furthermore,
the review process ensures bills are appropriately assigned to payers.
The process integrates efforts of the research spokes, financial systems,
and business office to effectively review and flag research financial
records.
The Business Office continuously strives to streamline its processes and
operations to efficiently and effectively provide support to the research
spokes. On a monthly basis, program managers review financial results,
which are prepared by the Business Office and include year-to-date and
cumulative statistics. Additionally, matrix reviews are conducted prior to
the start of research studies to ensure quality data entry for capturing
research activities impacting study specific revenue and expenses. Variance
reporting was introduced to the spokes to better track the expenses
of the studies and the administrative cost centers.
In 2009, the Business Office worked with Inova Fairfax Hospital leadership
to redesign the pillar report to include both budget and actual statistics
for comparison by spoke program manager and administrators. Also,
the Business Office has worked with Corporate Accounting to enhance
the project accounting reports from Oracle Discoverer.
The Business Office team consists of Candy Conway, MBA, and Camilo
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search operations by also providing guidance regarding the purchase of
capital equipment and other business functions.
In 2009, our research activities increased as indicated by the number of INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD (IRB) ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE
research applications submitted to the IRC and the IRB. This is due in part The goal of the Institutional Review Board is to ensure compliance with
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the mandates of the Federal Office of Human Research Protection.
provide summaries of the activities for each of the IRC offices to highlight Inova provides research investigators with two mechanisms to review
the continuous support offered by the IRC team to our investigators.
and support research protocols throughout the Inova Health System: two
The IRC is managed by Gity N. Porjosh, MPH, and supported by Terry local Institutional Review Boards (IRB) and the centralized Western IRB.
Castro-Perez, Sr. Administrative Assistant.
The local boards (Groups A & B) are independent and supported by the
IRB Administrative Office. The Western IRB is supported by a Program
Manager liaison at Inova.
P AGE 7 IRC