Original Senior Project Ideas:
- Work in collaboration with Northfield Hospital or a nursing home in town to shadow an administrator. While shadowing an administrator, I will learn about the facility and then use the facility as a hypothetical scenario from which I can create a 5-year plan for the facility. The plan would include scheduling improvement projects, projecting budgets and assessing the resource allotment in use at the facility as well as projecting improvements in those areas. Additionally, the plan may include healthcare education about ethics, regulations, hygiene, safety, etc. This will allow me to gather on-floor knowledge about healthcare administration, as well as putting to practice the skills needed to be an effective healthcare administrator.
- Setting up appointment with Tammy (at Northfield Hospital)
- Spend hopefully about four weeks at each of these institutions – VA, Northfield Hospital, Allina. I would like to study/shadow their administration teams and potentially interview patients or staff about their opinions on the administration and protocols of the facility. If interviews were inappropriate I could study their archives and look for progressions or changes in their practices and compare and contrast those. In this project I get to study different health care systems (public, private, for veterans) while still keeping it local.
- Study healthcare systems across different cultures (whether it be in US or cross-country) through research, interviews, potentially observation, etc. I could then create a large presentation about what I learned – the differences in economics, time allocation, supplies, services offered, insurance, etc. I could then suggest actions that both sides of the presentation could take to improve their healthcare systems.
Process
Realistically, I could only do something in Northfield if I wanted any in person research or itnerviews, because I had no car. So I refocused my search to Northfield options.
I spoke with Tammy Hayes at Northfield Hospital to bounce some ideas off of her, to gain other connections she recommended and to see what was feasible. We discovered that interviewing and observing was very possible and could be very resourceful for my project.
I ended up mixing the first and third option together by studying a healthcare system (Northfield) through interviews and research to come up with some dream solutions for them to a gap in care I found.
After I conducted my interviews, I found my niche population – high deductible patients. After some preliminary research and learning more about what observation would be, I decided not to do observation at Northfield Hospital. It would not have been an effective use of time because I would have been going to meetings and such, none of which coincided with high deductible patients.
I did extended research on High Deductible Health Plans and the nuances of the insurance companies. I was able to refer to Ashley Hodgson for learning about insurance plans, adverse selection, etc. After understanding High Deducible Health Plans, I was able to brainstorm some solutions.
Solutions I came up with – telehealth, facility collaboration, one-campus hospitals. I was then able to do a detailed research into those solutions and the possibilities they hold. I then brought all of my research together into my final presentation and paper.