Outpatient Services

Outpatient Services
The purpose of this assignment is to benefit from the perspective of a leader in an outpatient setting. This setting can be where you currently work or have access to members of the leadership team. You are asked to use the same setting you researched for the Case Assignment. This will allow you to see what you learned from your research in a real-world application. (Note: you will not be asked to reveal any proprietary or confidential information in your reports. Most of your reports will be based on your observations.)

Prepare and submit a paper responding to the following items:
1.Provide an overview of the outpatient setting you have chosen.
2.Conduct an interview with a member of the leadership team responsible for the department/unit.
3.In your interview be sure to address, at a minimum, the following: ?Provide background information on the interviewee (title/position, summary of academic and professional background, etc.).
?Identify trends (e.g., supply and demand, political climate, regulatory, demographic changes, or patient care) that are impacting this particular outpatient setting and how these are being leveraged or mitigated by the leadership.
?Identify the challenges (micro or macro level) this department is experiencing. How are they addressing these challenges?

4.Based on your interview and the research you have conducted for both the Case and SLP assignments, create a table that illustrates the similarities and differences in trends between the research conducted for the Case Assignment and the feedback in the interview. Analyze and discuss the findings shown in the table. This analysis should include both quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyzing the data.

SLP Assignment Expectations

Write a 4- to 6-page double-spaced paper (this does not include title and reference pages). It needs to be well written, based on information from scholarly research, and should demonstrate a thorough analysis of the topic.

Paper must be written based of order#81180845, shown below
Introduction
Outpatient services refers to the health care delivered to patients after being discharged to go back to their places of residence; unlike inpatient services where the patients are admitted to the hospital until they recover. There are different settings in the medical field where this modality of service is applied. These include outpatient clinics, radiographic imaging services, laboratory setting, minor surgery centers and physical therapy services, (Bailey, 2014). Most of these departments are dependent on each other. The patient would therefore need to be attended by personnel from all these departments before released to go back home. Besides the role played by these personnel, there are others factors that largely affect the quality of outpatient service delivery. Health care administrators are supposed to meet with departmental heads to assess the service provision and any trends in play that could be affecting service delivery. It is our role as administrators to analyze these trends and work out solutions fast enough before deterioration of the conditions. All outpatient departments offer life-sustaining form of treatment whose absence may costly to the patient’s health, (Guinane & Venturelli, 2012).
Discussion
For this Case Study, We will analyze as an outpatient service the Laboratory centers, to be specific, are among the key areas of medical field where outpatient services are carried out. The primary role of laboratories is to offer diagnostic services for both outpatients and inpatients. A laboratory is basically divided into sections each specializing on a specific area of diagnosis. The sections include microbiology, hematology, clinical chemistry, phlebotomy, cytology, parasitology, blood transfusion and virology. All these sections are run by laboratory professionals who have expertise in the corresponding fields. For instance, the hematology department deals with analysis of blood and should be run by a hematologist. Generally there is a wide specialization in the laboratory sector since the field is very diverse. The key personnel in the laboratory include: phlebotomists, cytologists, hematologists, microbiologists, receptionist and the laboratory manager. Pathologists are very important personnel and most times they are the heads of the laboratory section. They carry out biopsies and interpret cytological preparations. Subordinate workers are also key since hygiene, collection of samples, labeling, etc.., are equally valued for efficient service delivery.
Some of the outpatient laboratory services include:
– Blood screening for parasites
– Cytological examination of smears for cancer diagnosis
– Serological tests, for example, the pregnancy test.
– Matching of blood for transfusion purposes
– Analysis of body fluids in clinical chemistry section
Laboratory tests form a basis of therapy to be administered to the patient. There is usually collaboration between various departments in a clinical setting to constantly improve outpatient services. Once the patients are received in the hospital, they report to the clinicians who prescribe diagnostics tests and send the patients to the laboratory for confirmation of diagnosis. The tests are run by the laboratory personnel who then send the patient back to the clinician with the results obtained, or, they can input the results into a medical informatics system , like then one the military uses: Composite Health Care System (CHCS). The clinician prescribes therapy and sends the patient to the pharmacy department to collect the drugs. The laboratory sector therefore supports the entire clinical setting since no treatment would effectively be done without a background of diagnosis.
Different trends affect the laboratory services. Some of these trends include:
– Demographic changes
– Supply and demand
The above mentioned factors alongside many others may negatively or positively influence lab outpatient services. In any case the trends brings a negative impact, the entire clinical setting may be paralyzed considering the mutual relationship within the various departments in a hospital setting. Thus the need for adjustments to reverse the trends may be very urgent.
Demographic changes
This refers to changes in the population. The world’s population growth is rated at 1.35 percent per year. This is attributed to the technological advances that have increased life expectancy, (Skarra, 2008). These changes have an impact on the entire health sector not only on the laboratory sector. The increase in population raises the demand for health care. The number of outpatients gets bigger and it becomes a challenge to serve such great numbers in a single day. The processing of their specimen becomes a burden and the results take longer to be obtained. This brings out a corrupted outpatient service delivery which was initially not meant to offer delays but due to the changes in population the system became unstable and began fluctuating in terms of quality.
Demographic changes have social and economic impacts as well. The government bears the weight of providing health care to the increasing population. Some of the chemicals and reagents in a laboratory setting may get exhausted in the process of specimen processing. Since budget allocation for the purchase of these necessities may be restrained due to economic factors, the lab tests using such reagents may cease to be offered for a while. This is just but an example of how demographic changes may shatter outpatient services.
Demand and supply
Demand refers to the willingness and ability to purchase a commodity at a certain price. On the other hand supply refers to the willingness and ability to offer a commodity at a certain price. There are laws that govern both demand and supply. For instance, the law of demand states that a decrease in price leads to an increase in demand, (Reem, 2014). In a laboratory environment, the cost of services delivered may influence the number of patients who would turn up for testing. High costs will automatically hinder patients from seeking laboratory outpatient services that is in line with the law of demand. The supply of laboratory requirements will consequently reduce with a decrease in price.
However, as health care administrators we are entitled with the responsibility of capitalizing such trends and mitigating the unfavorable effects brought about by these trends. For instance, with the demographic changes, increased lab personnel should be employed to meet the increased demand. In addition, more laboratories ought to be put up and be well equipped to reduce congestion and delays of outpatient service delivery. As a medical administrator, I would propose and champion for more government funding to ensure that the laboratories are well equipped to run all tests required for outpatients.
The prices of services would also be to the favor of the patients. This would be done to capture demand while still retaining quality service delivery. By so doing, I would capitalize on the increasing population and consequently win the confidence of the general public. I would also maximize supply of laboratory requirements by creating fair prices in tender seeking thus ensuring continued security of these lab reagents and facilities.
Conclusion

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