Project Management for Health Care Professionals

Project Plan Scenarios
HCS/412: Project Management for Health Care Professionals

Project Plan Scenarios

HCS/412 v2

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Instructions

You will be assigned one scenario from the four options listed below to help you create your project planning documents. Note that only basic information is provided in your scenario. You will need to use critical thinking skills to determine reasonable financial considerations, actions to complete your project, and appropriate outcomes. Be creative and make your own assumptions where information is not provided; make sure your assumptions are reasonable and functional.

Scenario 1: PICC Line Placement
The PICC line procedure is a benefit to patients who need long-term antibiotics or other medications but have poor venous access or are being discharged from the hospital. The PICC line procedure is less expensive than a surgical alternative. Currently, there is one radiologist who performs these procedures, and the patient must wait until that one radiologist is available to have the procedure done. The proper training to perform this procedure will help avoid delays. The patient will benefit from being able to recover at home and use a less expensive home health agency for continued treatment. The hospital could experience lower costs while receiving improved reimbursement from insurance companies.

Financial Considerations
The estimated expense to meet the objectives for improving the PICC line placement should be minimal. The radiologist already performs this procedure and is willing to train the hospitalists to perform it as well. The cost would only be the time for training by the radiologist.

Possible Risks
Conflicting physician schedules

Unstable patient being brought for a procedure

The risk for infections like any catheter procedure

Catheter clotting

Assumptions
1. The radiologist is willing to share his or her experience.

Hospitalists are willing to be trained in this procedure.

Hospitalists will utilize their knowledge of the patient, their condition, and exercise good judgment in performing the PICC line procedure.

Scenario 2: Fast Track Clinic
The purpose of a fast track clinic is to divert non-emergency patients away from the emergency department (ED) and decrease the length of stay for patients who have minor illnesses or injuries. Patients who present to the ED for non-urgent care are the last to be seen because patients are triaged to treat the more severe cases first.

Patients frequently require more services within the ED, and a significant number require admission to the hospital, which can cause a backup of patients who are waiting to be treated for minor health issues. The length of time from admission to discharge has been increasing because the acuity of patients is high, and approximately 23 percent require hospitalization.

While waiting for a bed in the hospital to become available, patients are housed in the ED; thus, placing a burden on bed availability and increasing wait times. Unfortunately, patient satisfaction scores have been declining, and a loss of income has incurred because people are leaving without treatment due to extensive wait times.

Establishing a fast track clinic will help process and treat patients for non-urgent conditions. The clinic will be staffed with a physician assistant or nurse practitioner, which will allow the doctors to treat the more acute patients who present to the ED. The fast track clinic will benefit the ED because the average length of stay from admission to discharge will decrease and create additional bed availability. In addition, wait times will be reduced, which should raise the overall patient satisfaction scores and improve the flow of the ED.

EDs are already overwhelmed by the volume of patients waiting to be seen. A large percentage of visits to the ER are found to be non-urgent. The emergency department has a legal obligation under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) to evaluate every patient who enters the doors whether it is a medical emergency or not.

Level one visits are charged for minor injuries like ankle and wrist sprains. Over the last 4 years, the ED has observed a steady increase in level one visits from 49 in the fiscal year 2014 to 63 within the first 6 months of the fiscal year 2017. The projected number of level one visits is expected to be 252 for the current year. Level two and level three emergency room visits have also increased over the past four years. The majority of these cases can be triaged and diverted to the fast track clinic, which would provide sufficient resources for emergency cases. This new protocol, involving triage, is expected to increase near eleven percent this year as well.