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Journal #6: Habersham Medical Center

Taylor Van Tassel

Dr. Lindstone & Dr. Kaninjing

KINS 4306: Internship in Public Health

24 February 2019
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Week Six:

(2/18/19 APPT.; 2/19/19 8:10am-12:00pm; 12:30pm-4:40pm.; 2/20/19 8:13am-12:00pm;

12:30pm-4:43pm.; 2/21/19 8:30am-12:00pm; 12:30pm-5:00pm; 2/22/19 8:30am-12:00pm;

12:30pm-4:00pm)

Total Hours this week: 31 hours

Overall hours: 198 hours

This week I have been trying to configure other ways that I can have an impact on the

readmission rate while I am interning at Habersham Medical Center. Besides creating a

community resource guide, I am calling back patients and created a spreadsheet recording trends

that I see within these post-care call backs. Thus far, I have noticed that many patients are

misunderstanding medication instructions. Therefore, they are being readmitted to the hospital. I

collaborated with my site supervisor, Tyler Williams, on Tuesday afternoon about the trends and

progress I have made. There is a national survey, HCAHPS, that will call patients post discharge

and ask them about their experience at the hospital. There is a skew in data because if the patient

does not answer strongly agree, points will be counted against the hospital. While meeting with

my supervisor, he had given me the updated HCAHPS, the data confirmed that the patients are

not clearly understanding their medication instructions or their discharge instructions. My goal is

to speak with the nurse educator about whether or not the nurses are taking time to explain the

medications and the side effects. Along with patient education, I am planning on consulting with

the Wellness Manager at HMC to develop a plan to promote healthy exercise and movement

within the patients at the hospital. Many of them are elderly and could use some exercise in their

lives.
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Besides working on other ways to reduce the readmission rate, I also attended a

readmission meeting with Miriam Duncan. The meeting discussed what we could implement

exactly to reduce the rates. The downfall to this is that the data given is from 3 years ago.

Therefore, the actions and practices we implement now will not be shown in the data until atleast

5 years from now. The supervisors discussed that many of the patients refuse hospice when

really, they need to go home with hospice to prevent them from readmitting.

The remainder of the week, I assisted the case management department with Medicare

Rights forms, post-care calls backs, and contacting insurance companies to gain approval of

patients stay. Next week, I am going to shadow Homecare at HMC and understand the process

and what it takes to provide home health to patients.