December 2010 - State Strategies to Improve Quality and Efficiency
A report for The Commonwealth Fund looking at how 10 profiled states were using particular aspects of recent health care reform legislation to make changes in their state health care systems. This excerpt contains the abstract, which I wrote, and the bulk of the executive summary. Available in full http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2010/dec/state-strategies-to-improve-quality-and-efficiency
November 2010 - The Healthy Steps Program at 15
This report looks at the state of The Commonwealth Fund’s Healthy Steps for Young Children model, a preventive pediatric care model aimed at infants and toddlers up to age 3. The program is now 15 years old, and the report is the culmination of a ten-year evaluation, with supplemental follow-up in 2010, of the successes and challenges of the initiative’s implementation. Available in full at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Fund%20Report/2010/Dec/1458_Barth_Healthy_Steps_at_15.pdf
August 2010 -All-Payer Claims Databases
This brief looks at states' efforts to create all-payer claims databases, in order to gather comprehensive information on disease incidence, treatment costs, and health outcomes. These databases are providing essential trend data that will be needed to guide policymakers through the upcoming transitions in health care...Available in full at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2010/sep/all-payer-claims-databases
July 2010 - A Hospital at Home
This brief looks at a model of home-based coordinated care deployed in the United Kingdom that offers promise in reducing hospital admissions in a relatively low-cost manner. The "virtual ward" program provides multidisciplinary case management services to people who have been identified as high risk. Available in full at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2010/aug/predictive-modeling-in-action
July 2010 - Benefits of Medicaid Dental Patients
This report was for a client interested in looking at potential financial benefits to opening up dental practices to take more Medicaid beneficiaries. The client valued the edits but felt that ultimately the conclusions were unsatisfactory, so the report was not published; this is why identifying information has been removed.
May 2010 - USC Management Engineering Glossary and References
This is the final few pages of a 30-page paper written by a USC professor looking at how a group of hospitals implemented operations efficiency measures to improve a certain aspect of the work at the hospital. I am a fanatic for consistency and I take pride in my references.
May 2010 - SPeD Guide to Software Interface Exceptions
A fuller explanation of this document is available in the document itself, but in short, this is a guide from Quest Diagnostics, a reference testing lab of the sort your doctor would send you to for lab testing. Quest is 99% compliant with current interoperability standards, and this document lists the few exceptions to be expected when a clinic interfaces its electronic health records with Quest.
This was another document that required rigorous attention to formatting as well as the ability to translate programmer-speak into more approachable language. Both the nature of the document itself and the fact that it’s in Excel made Track Changes a less viable option for editing. So the first tab is an explanation of the document, the second is the original exceptions document, and the last is the version with my changes.
This was another document that required rigorous attention to formatting as well as the ability to translate programmer-speak into more approachable language. Both the nature of the document itself and the fact that it’s in Excel made Track Changes a less viable option for editing. So the first tab is an explanation of the document, the second is the original exceptions document, and the last is the version with my changes.
March 2010 - USC Management Engineering Case Studies Update
This is excerpted from a multi-part report about a USC demonstration project looking at improving operational efficiency in public hospitals using the same management engineering techniques that manufacturers such as Toyota use. This excerpt is from an update to previously published case studies on the participating hospitals.
March 2010 - USC Management Engineering in the Safety Net
This is the lead document in a multi-part report on a USC demonstration project to improve efficiency in safety net hospitals using the same management engineering techniques that manufacturers such as Toyota use. This sample shows my work when the document is considered well written and only light to medium editing is needed. This excerpt also includes a table, which again required considerable formatting to make everything consistent.
March 2010 - SPeD Toolset Technical Handbook
This is one of 50 or so tools that combined to make the SPeD toolkit; it's the guide to the technical requirements for proper implementation. The first two pages are from the original, and the next two are after my edits. I unfortunately neglected to save a copy of the version I submitted in Track Changes, so I had to use this unorthodox technique for my sample.
March 2010 - Small Practice eDesign (SPeD) Master Toolset Document
This is the master tool for a toolkit designed to aid small physician practices in the implementation of electronic health records. I no longer have the document that I edited in Track Changes, so this document is included only to show the consistency required to maintain fonts and other formatting all the way through a long document. I was responsible for matching the formatting (titles, font size and coloring, numbering, etc.) across all the editable documents among the 50 or so tools that made up the toolkit; the total toolkit came to between 200 and 300 pages.
January 2010 - Electronic Information Exchange for Children in Foster Care
This is the four-page summary of what was originally a 34-page thorough guide to how the state of California could and should pursue the development of electronic health records for children in foster care, because their health care needs are so often dropped through the cracks or needlessly duplicated. The full report is posted at the authors’ Web site, but they wanted something short and simple that they could give to legislators and other stakeholders, to give them an overview of the problem; this issue brief is the result of that request. Available in full at http://www.childrenspartnership.org/AM/Template.cfm?section=Reports1&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=14217.
