BHA FPX 4106 b Assessment 3 Health Care Information Review Proposal

Sample Answer

Health Care Information Review to Improve Care Outcomes for Patients Living With HIV

Health care information review is key to improving the quality of care offered to a specific patient population. Therefore, it is important to know the correct information or data to be reviewed, the data sources, and the goals or standards. Such information is important in planning for better care outcomes. One group of patients that need improved care is the patients living with HIV (Villanueva Baselga, 2020). These patients usually face various challenges, such as stigmatization which can be solved through a proper review of the quality of care offered to them. Therefore, the purpose of this assignment is to formulate a proposal for the health care information review. The data to be collected is on patients living with HIV. Some of the information includes nutritionist notes, the notes from nurses providing care, the patient surveys, discharge data, the referral information, medication list, and the laboratory results.

The highlighted data is to be collected to enable the care team to follow the nature of care the patients were offered within the specific period of interest in terms of quality and ascertain whether the patient’s health deteriorated or improved during this time. The labs will be particularly important in assessing the immunologic and virologic efficacy of antiretroviral therapy. In addition, these lab data will be key in monitoring any abnormalities connected with the antiretroviral drugs. The patient survey data will be key in knowing the patient’s opinions and attitudes as the care team continues to modify and align the care activities to suit the individual and community needs.

The Data Collection Plan

As part of the implementation plan, data collection will be undertaken. Nutritionist notes, the notes from nurses providing care, the patient surveys, discharge data, the referral information, medication list, and the laboratory results are the information to be collected. Successful data collection heavily depends on the plan. Therefore, it is important to timeously formulate a plan. As such, the process will commence from the particular benchmarks that the leadership has settled on as the key strategies for data collection and analysis. The individuals tasked with data collection will be offered a definite time frame to work with.

A maximum period of two weeks would be appropriate. The data will be obtained from the electronic health record system and the national databases such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (“AHRQ,” 2019). For a better plan, the data on patients diagnosed with HIV in the last five years will be obtained. The data from the two sources will be collected and compared against each other to help come up with a better plan. The office manager and the organization’s manager will be given a duration of one week to draft and review the proposal.

Working with data, especially confidential information such as patient information, requires that data integrity is guaranteed at each stage of the Data Lifecycle. Therefore, the data to be used in this project will undergo a typical data life cycle. The phases include creation, storage, usage, archival, and destruction (Rattan, 2018). In the first phase, the data will be acquired since the project will depend on the existing patient data. Besides, data entry will also be done since survey answers from patients will be collected. The storage phase will entail storage and protection while abiding by the recommended levels of security. A backup will also be key in this phase. The usage stage will entail applying the data to make decisions on how to improve care outcomes for patients living with HIV.

The archival stage will involve copying the data and storying in case it may be needed. The final stage will entail destruction, where the data will safely be destroyed since it is no longer required. Information will be retrieved in the creation and usage phases. Health information exchange can also be an important part of the project. The integration of HIE is key to enhancing the accessibility of every patient information critical in the provision of care (Payne et al., 2019). Therefore, it will enable access to patients’ past medical complications, surgeries, drug interactions, allergies, and past medical history.

On the other hand, HIE can pose legal complications in cases where patient information is shared without them consenting. The personnel required to complete the health information review are professional nurses with at least an undergraduate degree in nursing, computer knowledge, and at least a two-year clinical experience. As earlier indicated, the data is to be obtained from the EHR system, implying that the individuals involved in the data collection process have better knowledge of computer use. Therefore, some of them may require training on the benchmarks and the key medical terms to be applied when searching for the data. The information in the EHR system is usually sensitive and confidential. Therefore, the individuals to retrieve such data need to be trusted and of high integrity.

Data Security Plan

The HIPAA rules require that patient data be secure. The implication is that the organization will have to perform a review of the HIPPA rules for the staff to help them understand and also enhance their understanding of the impacts that violations may bring on the facility and the individual culprits (“U.S. Department,” n.d.). For example, violating the HIPPA rules may lead to jailing and other penalties such as financial penalties for the healthcare staff involved. Therefore, as part of this proposal, patient privacy is at the center stage of the activities to be undertaken. As such, only in the cases of informed consent will the patient data be used. The signed consent forms will be proof that the patients have allowed their data to be used in the project.

The protection of patient information is usually a top priority of healthcare organizations. Therefore, it is important to consider it as part of the data collection plans. As such, as part of the project, various strategies will be applied. As earlier indicated, written consent from the patients will be obtained to help enhance confidentiality and privacy (Cohen & Mello, 2018). Again, only a specific and selected number of staff will be allowed to access the patient data and records. Therefore, permission will have to be sought from the facility. This will also ensure that the data access rules and laws are not broken and that the patient data is only accessed and shared with the right and authorized persons.

As part of the data security plan, the staff will only use the electronic medical records as information written on paper can easily be lost, damaged, or left at someplace unknowingly, leading to unauthorized access. The importance of using electronic medical records is that they are usually encrypted to help in patient information security, and the staff has to infeed passwords to enable them to access the data (Cohen & Mello, 2018). When the process of the proposal is complete, the individuals who were granted access to help in data collection retrieval and no longer require access to the facility’s electronic medical records will have their access deactivated to ensure further data protection and confidentiality.

The Benchmarking Plans

Benchmarking is key in making adequate comparisons to trigger relevant adjustments. As such, benchmarking with the information from the national database is key. This will help in the process of standardization. Specific benchmarks are key even though the number of patients attended to in the hospital is not as many as those captured in the national database. In drawing the national data, the plan is to use the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality database and look for the benchmarks connected to HIV (“AHRQ,” 2019). Specific patient data will be considered, including the sex, race, deaths, and diagnosis. As such, these data will be compared to the data obtained from the facility.

Quality and Change Management Strategies

The data outcomes can be key in performing quality improvement reviews and recommending evidence-based best practices for procedures and policies. The quality assessment reviews can be undertaken using the data collected. When performing the data review, the project team has a better chance of finding the evidence-based practice that can be used to improve patient care quality. The data review will also show if the patients living with HIV have been getting the appropriate and adequate care (“AHRQ,” 2019). Reviewing the national data is also appropriate in finding out the data trends, whether numbers are decreasing or increasing, and a possible reason for the same.

The possible causes can be appropriate in coming up with better management strategies. The data comparison will also trigger sharing of the found information with the facility leadership to enable the formulation of necessary patient education strategies that can improve outcomes. Data from the sources will also be important in finding out where the facility is falling short when it comes to meeting the patient’s needs. Some of these barriers can be financial or material. Therefore the facility will be able to source funding that can be used to help the patients better manage their condition.

The result will be an improvement in the quality of the current patient care practices used in managing the patients living with HIV. Workflow is key when it comes to implementing changes in the disease management strategies (Stime et al., 2019). Therefore, the project will need a proper workflow. As such, the senior leaders and the office manager will undertake the review and submission of the final plan. An adequate time will then be offered to staff to review the proposed changes. In addition, the senior leaders and office managers will provide reviews and the necessary training to further improve the chances of meeting the set goals and objectives. Follow-ups are also to be done so that if any of the team members did not get an aspect clearly, then one-on-one sessions are to be arranged.

Implementation

Implementation is one of the most important steps in a project, and therefore it is also key regarding the review study. Therefore, it is important to consider suitable timelines. After data collection, the implementation process may take up to four weeks. Training of the employees and review of the procedures and policy will be carried out within two weeks. The reviews and training will be performed by the senior leaders (Shuman et al., 2020). The training will be important to ensure that everyone has a considerable understanding of the review process. After training, the actual implementation will then be accomplished. This phase is expected to take a further two weeks.

Conclusion

The health care information review is one of the best strategies that can be applied in improving patient care outcomes. Therefore, this proposal is to assist HIV patients in obtaining care from our facility and the community at large. The patients living with HIV usually experience stigma, which negatively impacts the disease management process. Therefore, this review information proposal will use the obtained information to improve patient outcomes and reduce stigmatization. Therefore, the quality of care offered by my physician group will have an enhanced chance of improvement to ensure that every patient adheres to the antiretroviral therapy strategies, access care at affordable rates, and experience less stigma.

References

• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2020) Nationwide HCUP Databases, Databases, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Rockville, MD Retrieved from https //www.hcupus.ahrq.gov/databases.jsp.
• Cohen, I. G., & Mello, M. M. (2018). HIPAA and protecting health information in the 21st century. Jama, 320(3), 231-232. Doi 10.1001/jama.2018.5630.
• Payne, T. H., Lovis, C., Gutteridge, C., Pagliari, C., Natarajan, S., Yong, C., & Zhao, L. P. (2019). Status of health information exchange a comparison of six countries. Journal of Global Health, 9(2). https //doi.org/10.7189%2Fjogh.09.020427
• Rattan, A. K. (2018). Data integrity history, issues, and remediation of issues. PDA Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, 72(2), 105-116. https //doi.org/10.5731/pdajpst.2017.007765
• Stime, K. J., Garrett, N., Sookrajh, Y., Dorward, J., Dlamini, N., Olowolagba, A., … & Drain, P. K. (2018). Clinic flow for STI, HIV, and TB patients in an urban infectious disease clinic offering point-of-care testing services in Durban, South Africa. BMC Health Services Research, 18(1), 1-9. https //doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3154-2
• Shuman, C. J., Ehrhart, M. G., Torres, E. M., Veliz, P., Kath, L. M., VanAntwerp, K., … & Aarons, G. A. (2020). EBP implementation leadership of frontline nurse managers validation of the implementation leadership scale in acute care. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 17(1), 82-91. https //doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12402
• U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (n.d.) The HIPAA Privacy Rule, Office for Civil Rights Headquarters, Washington, D.C. HHS.gov Retrieved from https //www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/index.html.
• Villanueva Baselga, S. (2020). Interactive documentaries and health Combating HIV-related stigma and cultural trauma. Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 12(2), 273-285. https //doi.org/10.1386/cjcs_00032_1