Quality of care related to an identified disease or condition
Develop a section (3-5 pages) of a proposal to study whether a group of physicians provided quality of care related to an identified disease or condition and population. Include a plan to manage the information from collection to destruction and an analysis of legal considerations.
Introduction
For this assessment and others in this course, you will assume the role of an office manager for a physician group. In most fields—whether it’s manufacturing, the service industry, or health care—organizations are looking for ways to improve the quality of service they provide to their customers. Keeping an eye on quality helps them remain competitive in the marketplace and stay in business. Otherwise, their customers will go elsewhere. This is especially true in the health care field, where people’s health and lives are at stake.
Preparation
Your physician group is no different than other organizations. It wants to find ways to improve the quality of care it provides to patients. This, in turn, helps the physician group remain profitable and stay in business. As a result, the senior leaders of your physician group have asked you to provide a documentation review of the quality of care provided by the office. As the office manager, you are the one responsible for the management of the health information within the office and the review of information to determine whether providers met quality of care standards. Determining this will require you to:
• Identify a disease or condition served by the physician group.
• Determine what patient information is needed and where to retrieve it.
• Compare your overall office data to the national benchmarks.
Typically, in the workplace, the physician group’s specialty area (cancer, diabetes, dermatology, et cetera) would dictate the disease or condition for which you would be collecting information. For the purpose of this assessment, however, you may select the disease or condition that interests you from this list:
• Asthma.
• Diabetes.
• Myocardial infarction.
• HIV/AIDS.
• Cancer.
Select the disease or condition that is important to you and that you want to study. Perhaps you have the disease or condition. Perhaps a family member or friend does. Remember you will be working with this condition in the remaining course assessments.
Now that you have determined the disease or condition you are going to study, you will need to begin collecting protected health information (PHI) for the patients treated by your physician group who have the condition you are studying. You will need to consider carefully the privacy, security, and confidentiality of the information within the patients’ office records. Determining how you, as the office manager, will maintain data security is a key aspect of your work. You are responsible for knowing and understanding the types of documentation, applications, and information systems used within and outside of the office. All information moves through a life cycle from creation to destruction. Regulations,
