Summary: Douglas County Clinic Budget Cut

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Douglas County Clinic Budget Cut
Charlotte Gardner
HSC/514
August 19th, 2012
Albert Hart

Douglas County Clinic Budget Cut
Douglas County Clinic is small clinic in Lee Nebraska that provides quality healthcare to all of its patients. It is a facility that accepts Medicaid patients and does its best to meet the needs of its patients. However, recently there has been a slight budget cut of 15% in the department and a decision must be made as to what services can be eliminated or introduced, while keeping the best interest of the patients at mind. The goal of this paper is to explain what decisions have been made concerning these services, and a detailed description of how this organization came to its decision.
In an effort to start
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IDT is able to facilitate the use of research evidence with decision making. It allowed for assessment of the research evidence and assisted the clinic in applying it to these decisions. There are six important steps that are outlined through IDT. These steps helped take control of the decision making process, and allowed for needed information to be found and assessed by the team. The six steps are as follows: (1) framing the question, (2) finding sources of information, (3) assessing the accuracy of the evidence, (4) assessing the applicability of the evidence, (5) assessing the “actionability” of the evidence, and (6) determining if the information is adequate. (Rundall et al. 2008) Each step was equally important and valuable when making these…show more content…
That’s why this decision to control inventory, stop hiring, remove continuing education classes, cap off Medicaid patients, and reduce clinic hours was made by using the best evidence available to the facility. The biggest help was IDT, which allowed for a step by step critical evaluation of this situation and information at hand. The successful evidence-informed decision making process requires a lot of leadership from staff, boards, executives and management personnel. They need to focus their attention on efficiency, access, and quality of the decision before it’s made. Here at the clinic, we have confidence in our employees and know that they have made the right decisions for the Douglas County Clinic.

Reference

Center for Healthcare Strategies Inc.. (2012). Medicaid Policy. Retrieved from http://www.chcs.org/info-url_nocat5108/info-url_nocat.htm?type_id=1048

Rundall, T. G., Martelli, P. P., Arroyo, L., McCurdy, R., Graetz, I., Neuwirth, E. B., et al. (2007, September/October). The informed decisions toolbox: Tools for knowledge transfer and performance improvement. Journal of Healthcare Management,52(5), 325.

Wright, P. D., Bretthauer, K. M., & Côté, M. J. (2006, February). Reexamining the nurse scheduling problem: Staffing ratios and nursing shortages. Decision Sciences, 37(1),

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