README.md

clinic_finder

ABORTRON

• gem: https://github.com/colinxfleming/clinic_finder
• CI: https://travis-ci.org/colinxfleming/clinic_finder
• build script: build.sh
• run tests: rake test

Problem Description

Our case management team is helping patients navigate a variety of logistical challenges to securing an abortion, such as figuring out the closest clinic to them, or the cheapest clinic in their state, or a clinic that will still see them (since many clinics have a gestational age cutoff after which they won't do abortions anymore). The DC area is fortunate enough to have a variety of providers, and we'd like to have a tool that helps us filter down our set of clinics and help our case managers recommend an optimal few clinics, given a patient's particular needs.

How we'd like to use it

We'd prefer this as a ruby library so that we can plug it into our existing case management system easily. If that's not an option, we can adapt the logic from it.

How we'd like it to work

As a case manager, given that I have:

• A patient with limited resources, a gestational age, and a zip code
• A set of clinics with certain attributes, including an address and a set schedule of costs and whether or not they accept National Abortion Federation (NAF) funding, and certain other factors that might make them a better fit for a patient

I would like to be able to filter and sort down to a subset of available clinics.

Relevant parts of our clinic objects that we'd like to filter on:

• zip: five digit zip code
• cost: cost in dollars for an abortion procedure
• gestation_limit: limit in days, at which point a clinic won't perform abortions. e.g. no abortions after 147 days (21 weeks).
• naf_clinic: boolean value for whether or not a clinic accepts NAF funding (e.g. whether or not we can count on a grant)

Information from a patient that we'd like to plug into the tool:

• zip code of patient
• patient's gestational age

Setup

Add clinic_finder to your application's Gemfile. Consult the rubygems page for most recent version

gem 'clinic_finder', '~> 0.0.1'

Run bundler from your terminal

Manually install the geokit gem in your application, as the client_finder gem is dependent on it (*open ticket to resolve)

This gem currently requires data to be in the form of a .yml file, which is passed in to the library instance at the point of initialization as such:

Abortron::ClinicFinder.new(yaml_file)

The gem expects yml data to be in the following format:

planned_parenthood_oakland:
  street_address: 1001 Broadway
  city: Oakland
  state: CA
  zip: 94607
  accepts_naf: false
  gestational_limit: 139
  costs_9wks: 425
  costs_12wks: 475
  costs_18wks: 975
  costs_24wks: null
  costs_30wks: null

Hot tip: Before using your yml file, please be sure to feed it through a YAML linter like YAML Lint to remove any syntax errors.

Long term goal here is to make this usable with ActiveRecord models directly.

Methods

First, you will need to instantiate a library instance.

@abortron = Abortron::ClinicFinder.new(your_yaml_file)

To find the cheapest clinic within your dataset that will serve the patient based on their LMP, call:

@abortron.locate_cheapest_clinic(patient_zip: 94114, gestational_age: 60)

This will return an array of hashes that look like so:

=> [{name: "planned_parenthood_oakland", cost: 1000}, 
    {name: "castro_family_planning", cost: 1500}]

To find the closest clinic within your dataset that will serve the patient based on their LMP and patient zip code, call:

@abortron.locate_nearest_clinic(patient_zip: 94117, gestational_age: 100)

This will return an array of hashes of the 3 closest clinics and their calculated distance, which should look like so:

=> [{:name => "castro_family_planning", :distance => 0.92356303468274}, 
   {:name => "planned_parenthood_san_fran", :distance => 1.8319683663768311}, 
   {:name => "planned_parenthood_oakland", :distance => 9.580895789655901}]

Updating the gem

To publish updates to the gem, merge code into the master branch and then use the following commands:

gem build clinic_finder.gemspec
gem push clinic_finder-0.0.1.gem

You will need to replace the 0.0.1 with your current version of the gem.

Further goals

• Make gem usable with ActiveRecord models directly, instead of via a yml file that requires maintenance
• Fix dependency on user manually requiring geokit
• Incorporate check for NAF only (the infrastructure is currently present as a default-false argument, but is not being used)
• Create method for cheapest and closest, defined as the cheapest clinic of your three closest clinics
• Create a method for easiest/fastest access via public transportation (this may require patient to provide full address, not just zip code)

Measuring success

We'd like to walk away with:

• A ruby gem that we can install in a separate app
• A standalone sinatra app that we can demo to case managers