Introduction

In the previous assignments, I outlined the challenge of diabetes care among African American patients at the physician group facility. So far, it is evident that leveraging data is an important strategy for identifying gaps and areas for improvement in our physician group. This proposal aims to outline a plan for collecting comprehensive medical record data over the past 2 years to identify gaps and areas of improvement. The target sources of information for this project include the electronic medical record (EMR) system and pharmacy database at the facility which will provide patient data including demographics diagnosis, laboratory test results, medications, treatment plans, and clinical nots. The EMR is used throughout all departments in healthcare facilities meaning that it will contain data across inpatient outpatient, specialist, and pharmacy settings. The aim of health information collection is to comprehensively evaluate the quality of care delivered by our physician group with evidence-based guidelines. The focus is to identify the gaps and strengths in the management of diabetes among African American populations suffers a disproportionately high burden of diabetes and worse outcomes compared to other demographics. The insights obtained from this information review will help t make decisions and recommendations on the most appropriate targeted initiatives that can be used in enhancing equality in diabetes care while reducing complications and the cost of healthcare.

Data Collection Plan

The data review processes will take 6 months where a multidisciplinary team will be involved on gathering, assessing and integrating patient health information for analysis to identify gaps in the delivery of diabetes care services to African American patients. The main sources of information will be the pharmacy management system and the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system at our physician group. The EMR system comprises of information on patient demographics, treatment histories, diagnosis, treatment plans and outcomes, while the pharmacy management systems provide information about the patient’s prescribed medications.

The sources will be augmented by the regional HIE network, which will support the electronic transfer of patient health information between our facility and other healthcare organizations according to the national standards. The advantage of adopting HIE in the project as a source of information is that it can provide insights on costs of healthcare for patients, and ensures completeness of data being sought for review, by providing insights on patient histories that are not available at the facility’s internal information systems (Menachemi et al., 2018). The data collection process will target patient health data obtained between November 2021 and November 2023.

Information Lifecycle Flow

Personnel and Strategies for Implementation

The project will be completed by medical records, data analysis, and IT support professionals. The medical records team monitors patients’ health histories, enters data, audits, and processes data. This project requires them to collect and analyze crucial data. Data analysts will analyze the data to identify diabetes care delivery trends, projections, strengths, and gaps. Two IT specialists will provide technical sup