Introduction to Healthcare Management

Posted by Winnie Melda on February 8th, 2019

Management is a crucial element in support and coordination of services provided within the healthcare organizations. It entails the diverse set of activities occurring within the healthcare system for the purpose of meeting the strategic goals using the available resources (Koh & Tan, 2011). Management of care across a spectrum of settings assists the health care industry deliver services proficiently (Mills et al., 1996). There are numerous settings where healthcare management skills apply to the healthcare industry. This paper will review three of these settings and identify the types of information that must be collected in each of these settings to facilitate care and the billing of care. The healthcare settings reviewed include hospital, outpatient and long-term care settings. Furthermore, the paper will look into the details of data collection.

Hospitals

Hospitals need superlative management to help them coordinate activities in the hospital ranging from treating life-threatening diseases or the common cold to harmonizing the diversity of departments in the hospital (Mills et al., 1996). Hospitals in the contemporary period (21st Century) have advanced information systems for data collection and reporting. These advances are useful because the hospitals need to collect patients and workforce demographic data as well as data from their performance (Koh & Tan, 2011). The hospitals derive all data collection about performance from sources and elements that are of broad use.  The Hospital Data Section collects and reports hospital facility information and hospital charity and related charity care data based on two principal data sources (Alshawi et al., 2013). These sources include the Annual Survey of Hospitals and the Annual Statement of Community Benefits Standard. More importantly hospital information concerning patient demographics falls short or false devoid of a uniform way to collect data. The entire workforce handles the collection and documentation of data; however, the data management coordinator handles the maintenance, administration and reporting of patient data (Alshawi et al., 2013).

Outpatient Settings

The outpatient settings also known as ambulatory care create a significant amount of revenue in the health care system. Outpatient settings need to create services with high-yield and high-outcome with the focus of throughput (Mills et al., 1996). Outpatient settings collect information by collecting basic information from the patients. The settings collect data related to infrastructure, aggregates, cost expenditure and also individual level. Nevertheless, the main types of data collected include Clinic type, occasions of service and group sessions (Alshawi et al., 2013). All the staff members collect data from different sources, but the management handles overall collection and maintenance of data.

Long-term Care Settings

Long-term care settings involve helping people with varying ages particularly senior citizens and the physically challenged to perform their activities over a long period (Koh & Tan, 2011). The long-term care settings collect individual patient information including the localities, habits, preferences and other pieces of personal information (Mills et al., 1996). Long-term care services require a detailed description of the patient information to deliver professional services. They also collect information on the workforce or the care providers to assess their capability in terms of service delivery. The long-term care settings also perform infection control surveillance to the collection of information for action in the delivery of services (Alshawi et al., 2013).

 Triage System for Patient Visits

______________________________________________________________________________

Purpose/Scope:

To help employees know when they should immediately have a patient come in for an emergency visit (high priority), and when the patient can wait (medium and low priority) for their visit.

______________________________________________________________________________

Background:

In numerous cases patients have complained or suffered immeasurably because of the incompetence or on ability of the healthcare workforce to respond to different scenarios. It is not too uncommon for people to die as a result of unnecessary delays. Health providers should respond immediately to the patients coming into the hospital according to the level of priority.

______________________________________________________________________________

Goal:

To establish policies, protocols and didactic guidelines for emergency response and institutional preparedness for patients

______________________________________________________________________________

Required resources:

Sufficient medical, nursing, and support staff available to provide initial therapy and triage, evaluation, and stabilization for numerous persons. This ability includes:

  • Visually identifying the patients.
  • Communicating proficiently with patients
  • Tracking patient’s symptoms.
  • Proficiency with emergency equipment.

______________________________________________________________________________

Action steps:

1.    General Appearance

Observe the patient’s appearance and behavior when they arrive for services. The health care provider can develop an image about the patient’s physiological, mental and emotional status. Take particular notice of the following:

  • Observe the patient’s capability to move as they move towards the reception area. Is it normal or restricted? Check in what way the movement is restricted if present.
  • Weigh down the level of sickness from physical appearance
  • Observe the patient’s behavior for tips
  1. Circulation

Evaluate the circulation of the patient by determining heart rate, pulse and pulse characteristics. You can also use skin indicators or eating and oral discharge.

  1. Disability
  • Assess the disability by conducting alert/verbal/painful/unresponsive (AVPU) responsiveness scale.
  • Assess the patients Glasgow Coma Scale, motor assessment and sensory assessment (monitoring the activity levels of the patient if possible).
  • Check whether the patient can retain consciousness
  • Assess the levels of pain in the patient.
  1. Environment
  • Assess temperature to check for signs of hypothermia or hyperthermia
  • Assess for other risk factors like extreme of ages, chronic diseases and others that might be significant predictors to the ailment.
  1. Communications

Allow the patient to release their emotions and in the process try to keep a somber mind before commencing explanation of the procedures and protocols. Once the patient settles explain the procedures carefully and calmly while reassuring efforts towards remediation. Ask questions in a manner that shifts the focus from the emotion to exploring the health concern.

______________________________________________________________________________

Conclusion

The healthcare industry is growing immensely with the introduction of new fields and functions. Health care management is a growing profession with interesting opportunities in both direct care and non-direct care settings. Health care management is one among these fields that provides leadership and direction to organizations that provide health services to the public. There are several factors that influence the unrelenting growth of managed health care the economy, need, and regulatory structures and protocols set forth on the industry. Individuals aspiring to join the health care industry stand to benefit a lot from understanding the roles and responsibilities and functions performed by health care management.

Reference

Mills, M., Romano, C., & Heller, B. (1996). Information management in nursing and health care. Springhouse: Springhouse Corp.

Alshawi, S., Missi, F., & Eldabi, T. (2003). Healthcare information management: the integration of patients' data. Logistics Information Management16(3/4), 286-295.

Koh, H., & Tan, G. (2011). Data mining applications in healthcare. Journal of healthcare information management19(2), 65.

 Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in graduate paper writing service if you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom research paper writing service.

Like it? Share it!


Winnie Melda

About the Author

Winnie Melda
Joined: December 7th, 2017
Articles Posted: 364

More by this author