Project Management?
When it comes to healthcare, project management plays a very crucial role. This is because the stakes are much higher. Additionally, hospital institutions that practice operational project management are at a tremendous advantage because they tend to gain from reduced costs. Since the well-being of the patients matters a lot to hospital institutions, project management especially in the context of healthcare becomes more complex, which consequently makes it even more critical. It is, therefore, vital to ensure that things are done in an appropriate manner since the beneficiaries are the hospital and the patients. This kind of outcome is desirable since it is a win-win on both ends. I know of very few people with a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. This is because the steps taken towards certification are complicated, and most people are either afraid to take on the task or may give up halfway. Research shows that it is challenging to engage project managers who show little to no interest in certification (Farashah, Thomas, & Blomquist, 2019).
There are four types of project managers. These include gambler, prophet, executor, and expert. The executor is the project manager we are most interested in here. The executor is always active in his pursuit of business opportunities that are found within the existing strategic boundaries. He or she is not stopped by any risk, uncertainty, or challenge, but is instead focused on the need for execution. Executors regularly depend on organizational members to trail behind their analyses, which is considered as the surest path to success (Pedersen & Ritter, 2017).
Project Management
Communication and having relationships are among the most valuable features of project managers in the process of project management. An important point to note, however, is that communication skills are rated higher than the building of relationships. This is due to various reasons. A journal article by Muszynska (2016) claimed that the skill of communication possessed by the project managers influenced the fundamental areas in project management. This skill is required to constructively convey the critical areas of quality, cost, and even time. This being the case, the expertise of communication incorporates the key features mentioned above (cost, scope, and time) to bring about quality services in healthcare. This, therefore, means that communication is the “lifeblood” of any project management process and thus to realize the goals and objectives that are set by public health projects, the project manager should be able to communicate clearly and fluently to ensure collaboration and integration of information in public health administration (Muszyńska, 2016)
Project managers in healthcare should be certified instead of merely considering the fact that they are familiar with the operations of the projects area. As mentioned earlier, very few individuals have the Project Management Professional certification, due to difficulty in the certification process. This being the case, many of the individuals tend to quit midway through the process. Putting this into context, project managers with certifications all undergone a vigorous process to achieve this and can, therefore, tackle anything that is brought to them in the process of project management. An important fact is also that it is strenuous to engage project managers with no certifications (Farashah et al., 2019).
Ready? Set? Oh!
According to reports from the New York Times, New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center in the year 2006 was hit by Hurricane Katrina. The floodwaters then marooned the hospital putting out power while at the same time, temperatures rose to over 100 degrees Celsius. When investigators came to the hospital a little while later, they were shocked since there were a lot of bodies that were situated in the morgue, a total of 45 corpses. It was then discovered that a doctor (Anna Pou) and two other nurses were responsible for quickening the deaths of some of the victims through lethal injections. Later on, in July of the year 2006, the doctor was arrested together with the nurses, but she defended herself in court, saying she was only easing the pain of the victims instead of the prolonged suffering. (NYTimes, 2009).
Following reports from CBS News, Manhattan’s NYU Langone Medical Center during Superstorm Sandy in the year 2012 was forced to evacuate as a result of the storm. The hospital began its evacuation process through shifting three hundred patients by the early evening hours of Monday, and by the following day in the morning, everybody had been evacuated successfully (CBS News, 2012).
Memorial Hospital in New Orleans experienced the vulnerabilities during the calamity of Hurricane Katrina, which included supply shortages, power losses, sheer exhaustion, malfunction of communications both inside and outside the hospital and finally, they did not have definite plans of evacuation (Hayes & Lee Daugherty Biddison, 2015). In contrast, NYU Langone Medical Center during the Superstorm Sandy experienced the vulnerabilities of inexperience in responding to disasters as they lacked the training necessary to do so quickly and efficiently (VanDevanter et al., 2017). In the matter of responses, Memorial hospital was slow to evacuate its patients. Due to minimal resources, they were forced to evacuate the patients on a specific order according to the level of illness, while other patients were reported to have died as a result of euthanasia issued by the doctors and nurses. NYU Langone Medical Center, on the other hand, was quite useful in the evacuation process. Although the nurses lacked experience, they were able to draw their resourcefulness and, through effective leadership and support, evacuated all the patients overnight. The lesson offered in this case is the preparedness that individuals and the hospitals must-have if something occurs as this could prove useful in saving lives.
Be prepared
To protect the lives of patients, staff, and health facilities. Health facilities need to be ready during times of disaster, either human-made or natural. The CMS has conditions and standards to determine the level of preparedness in the health care facility. CMS developed the following guidelines to establish a consistent emergency preparedness. They include proper planning, organization, excellent communication, training, equipping personnel, and excising on how to tackle emergencies. When a plan is generated, constant re-evaluation is required, which is done through simulations, successful actions, strategies, and drills. These standards apply to the following; Hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, psychiatric treatment facilities, elderly care centers, organ transplant facilities, religious non-medical facilities, individual and intellectual disability care institutions, outpatient rehabilitation centers, public health agencies, community health facilities clinics, organ procurement facilities, and terminal renal disease facilities. (Dash et al., 2019)
With periodic maintenance of the emergency plans, comes an effective and efficient response to disasters. Challenges in emergency preparedness may arise from poor leadership, inadequate funding, lack of action plans and commitments, and poor communication. The management of the health institutions is therefore required by law to follow all guidelines put in place to increase their level of preparedness in emergencies. CMS aims to safeguard the available physical resources, availability of human resources, and ensuring that all business operations run smoothly as possible. The health facilities with these standards are regarded as emergency preparedness to disasters (Drummond & O’Rourke, 2019)
Insight hiding in plain sight
With enormous data flowing into the health sector systems with the objective of improving health care in the country, advanced analytics is needed in dealing with the large and readily available data in the health industry as a whole. Data generated from hospital records, patient’s health records, reports from medical examinations, the response from implanted health devices, intelligence from health research, and necessary information from the internet is managed and analyzed by technology and used in providing health care to the public. Advanced analytics helps in providing accurate and quick responses to problems in the health sector and even providing updates on the patient’s well-being wherever they are located. It is an excellent tool in providing assisting health professionals in tackling the most troubling infections and problems (Durovich, 2018).
The medical data requires management and proper analysis to obtain useful information, and this is done by using high tech computing to provide relevant solutions needed by health professionals, thus improving the community health care. The progressive analysis is revolutionizing the capability of the provision of health care to all those who need it in the community by providing better services and proper financial management. Other sources of health information include parental consultation, sociology, and even an individual’s behavior. The role of population health is to imitate an individuals’ infection state, health aspects, risk factors to describe and outline health outcomes, such as life expectancy, quality of the individual living life, disease occurrences, and health costs. This provides a broad prospect on how to treat patients and how to make sure the treatment responds accordingly. (Kindig, 2020)
Food Safety and Foodborne Illness
Food safety is vital in ensuring that people do not get sick over the consumption of contaminated foods. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is responsible for controlling the response to foodborne disease outbreaks by coordinating between public health partners (CDC, 2019). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a federal agency tasked with the responsibility of protecting food that American citizens consume. FDA regulates and ensures the safety of food products supplied in the market by enforcing the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
In 2015, chipotle Mexican Grill had an outbreak of Escherichia coli. Primarily, fifty-five individuals in eleven states got sick after consuming food at the restaurant. The incident was reported to the CDC, and investigations comprising of the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service commenced (CDC.gov, 2016). Advanced laboratory techniques were used to get more details on the bacteria and determine the specific source of the outbreak. CDC was in charge of the operation as it coordinated the systems that were aiding investigators to determine the cause and extent of the outbreak. During the outbreak, there were zero fatalities.
The 2008 salsa salmonella outbreak was more extensive, with cases reported in forty-three states. Similar to the E. coli outbreak, CDC was in charge of searching for the source of the outbreak. The New Mexico Department of Health informed the CDC on the outbreak prompting the agency to take prompt action. CDC also presented measures to inhibit the transmission of the infection. Investigations on the outbreak outlined jalapeno peppers as the critical source of contamination. Moreover, at least two deaths were reported to be a result of the disease.
Preparedness
Preparation is a crucial aspect of mitigating risks. Certain events might arise despite the placement of preventive measures. Therefore, preparation can aid in effectively controlling such occasions. A nation’s preparedness can be assessed by looking at the protocols in place to help in controlling potential outbreaks. Isolation centers and disease tracking technology are useful tools that can provide an elaborative picture on the state of preparedness of a country.
Anticipation is a great defense tool against being overwhelmed by a sudden rise in cases of illnesses caused by the same factor. The responsible federal and state agencies must establish laid-out guidelines that aid the responding personnel on the effective ways of handling outbreaks. Also, preparedness can be enhanced through the creation of a robust disease surveillance system. Coordination structures with public health partners is also a crucial element of preparation (Facilities, 2017). Carrying out drills and tests on facilities is also an activity that can help with the evaluation of the state of preparedness within the healthcare system.
The emergence of outbreaks is often accompanied by interference in the healthcare system and panic within the public. Knowledge of how to approach such cases is crucial as it determines the cooperation of the public in aiding towards finding the point of origin of the outbreak. Moreover, preparedness prevents being caught off-guard and aids in the immediate attention to the matter of concern the moment the outbreak is discovered. Furthermore, preparation helps to prioritize activities and efficient use of resources towards controlling outbreaks (Curless, Gerland, & Maragakis, 2018).