Response one PHM-08

One observation that I have noticed in creating my final project is that I should have also added another recommendation to it. A suggestion was made by one of my peers regarding my project on electronic medical records and quality improvement.

The suggestion was: ensuring that medical providers utilize the resources necessary to give to patients to ensure they are taking the right steps toward a healthy or healthier lifestyle. The examples that were given include Healthy People 2020 and any other health promotion program implemented to improve particular health issues within the respective community.

In creating the strategies and recommendations, my process was typing key words on the SNHU Shapiro Library EBSCO database and found the articles that were relevant to the project. The key words were mostly the critical elements found in the directions for the respective milestones that I have done so far. I also looked over the milestones/reflection journals by taking some of the words for emphasis and summarization. I referred to the scenario instructions every now and then to remind myself again on what is required of me to do.

One challenge that I encountered during the course of my research was finding the right articles that best support the critical elements. I solved this problem by adding (or taking away) certain phrases from the search engine so that I could go more in-depth (or, in some cases, focus on the main element in question).

To make sure that the recommendations that I made were supported by the analysis, I went back to the Milestone Two assignment as well as the reflection journal for Module One by summarizing the key points, and then added new scholarly information related to the recommendations.

It was an overall balance between going back to past assignments/scenario instructions and researching fresh, new information. I feel that my analysis was not taking a back seat to my factual overview. I have done my overview in a straightforward manner and I have done my analysis in a separate paper, which was also in a coherent, effective way. I knew what I had to do. I have done the overview and analysis in two milestones as required.

Response two-PHM-08

For the final projects, I must admit that Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) is not an area where I have any professional experience, and with my career interests, I don't think this is a field of work I would strive towards. However, I know that EMRs are important to public health, which is my degree program, such as in the realm of surveillance (Shi and Johnson, 2014).

I found my comfort level to be a challenged in trying to provide an analysis and formulate strategies and recommendations, but at the same time, I know I am growing my knowledge in an important emerging focus of healthcare today. Aside from our textbook, I used Google Scholar to try to obtain further information, and have used resources from the CDC as well.

I feel I have learned a lot more by reviewing other discussion posts from my peers in this course, and our professor has been terrific in her timely feedback on assignments, which is always helpful. As I work on the final assignments for this course, I want to try to evolve even more beyond just the facts of the case, trying to connect all elements together. Lastly, I will try to present the information from a balanced yet persuasive manner in my efforts to entice positive change for my scenario.

Reference

Shi, L., & Johnson, J. A. (Eds.). (2014). Public health administration: Principles for population-based management (3rd ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Response Three-PHM-08

For my final project one observation that I used to create the strategies and recommendations was that I went back and reviewed the chapters associated with strategic planning. From their I decided to also go back and review all my notes and the recommendations from my fellow classmates who have giving me throughout the course for me to come up with a strategic plan for my chosen topic.

One of the challenges that I encounter was that I was trying to come up with a strategic plan to decode if I needed to add more physicians to help decrease the emergency room or will adding a whole new clinic which would include an ambulatory surgery center will help to serve the community better. There was also the recommendation to convert from paper based medical records over to electronic health records which would be a smart idea since there are extra benefits in having an electronic health records.

Going back to the first scenario I decided that purchasing a new clinic as adding all the mentioned above services under one roof can help alleviate all the issues with having to budget and staff several clinics. Instead the cost associate with having one building in time will pay for itself.

One way that I was able to resolve the challenges was that with the revenue coming in from Medical and Medicaid because of the electronic medical records that could be put back into also hiring more physicians to decrease cost for patients who use the emergency room as their own physician's office. The steps I took to support my analysis was that I used scholarly google to find other articles on similar situations that other organizations may have faced and used their recommendations, as well as, my own to justify the analysis. I think that my analysis was not taken a back seat to my factual overview since all the information will be presented to the best of my knowledge.

Shi, L., & Johnson, J. A. (Eds.). (2014). Public health administration: Principles for population-based management (3rd ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.