Obamas Healthcare Plan - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal The researcher intends to carry out a qualitative research on theObama’s healthcare plan while focusing on its mandate of electronic medical record. In this regard, the proposal includes specific aims and objectives of the proposed research that focus on the recognition of different aspects of Obama’s mandate of electronic medical record while analyzing its impact on healthcare organizations. The proposal includes brief literature review relating different existing perspectives on such mandate of Obama’s healthcare plan. The researcher will be utilizing secondary research methodology as basis of the proposed research while benefiting from primary research method to validate analysis of secondary method. It is anticipation of the researcher to complete the study in a period of nineteen weeks. Research Proposal Aims & Objectives The main aims and objectives of the proposed research are to: Recognize and analyze Obama’s health care plan in terms of its mandate of electronic medical record in the country Analyze the extent of such mandate in health care organizations and whether such changes will result in alteration in healthcare-related decisions or not Analyze and predict the social changes in public’s decision-making processes that will occur after implementation of such mandate in the country Analyze the role of healthcare organizations in terms of implementation and application of electronic medical record mandate nationally. Problem Statement Particularly, the researcher will put efforts on the following research statement to achieve the aims and objectives of the study: “To analyze the impact of the mandate of electronic medical record on healthcare organizations” Key Related Issues A considerable number of experts and researchers are putting efforts to analyze impact of this mandate, and some of the significant issues identified in their analyses are: Financial possibility of this mandate Lack of healthcare professionals to implement such mandate Standardization of electronic records on national level Social and economic benefits of the mandate Significance One of the major reasons of selecting this topic is its significant impact on millions of American lives in the country. President Obama has proposed this mandate of electronic medical record; however, it is very imperative to identify its pros and cons that will allow a decision in favor or against the mandate. Literature Review Brief analysis of the literature (Lehmann, 56-63) has indicated that the recent announcement by Obama’s presidency to set up full digital health records by 2014 has become big news worldwide. There are many aspects, which can come under discussion pertaining to this issue. First, it is important to analyze whether it is possible to invest a huge amount of $10 billion into a healthcare initiative and whether the goal is even realistic enough. To dive deeper into this issue, one big problem with this is getting hold of ample IT professionals to carry out the plan. USA is already short of IT health professionals, which is evident by unfilled vacancies for EMR professionals for months. On the other hand, there are speculations that this new investment by the government will also open a huge space of job vacancies for the unemployed in the realm of healthcare IT. Experts (Lehmann, 70-89) have indicated that many citizens who are in the field or wish to pursue it can see themselves having a bright future in the next five years. However, the issue persists and that is the supply of work force. What is more difficult is rather to train blue-collar workers or under-employed to run and manage the electronic medical record. The reason is that it is extremely difficult to teach someone, especially someone with no or little background in IT in general. What this job requires is an exclusive combination of IT expertise, health care sensibilities, and business sense of mind. A good reality check will be the example of Massachusetts where the government tried to develop a fully computerized medical records database of its 63 hospitals and 14000 physician clinics by 2014. The pilot program produced the estimation of $340 million to organize the statewide system (Lehmann, 146). Such speculations also raise the question of how these medical health records are, in first place, expected to help the healthcare industry of US. Adding to this query is an opinion that it might be too early to invest in setting up electronic health records because they are not standardized yet and thus, lacks the ability to function on an inter-operational level. Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, Secretary of Health and Human Services for Massachusetts (Shortliffe, 111-156) reasons that despite of the fact that Obama’s timeframe is ambitious; the need to bring all the data on one platform and to be able to track down the data across systems and hospitals cannot be over-emphasized. This program will allow for more patient-safety. As all the records will be available across the country, it will become much easier to transfer medical data across incase of migration from one state to another. In addition, the doctors and nurses will also benefit from this measure, as the information about all their potential visitors will be made available at a click and chances of getting misleading information or worse, false diagnosis will reduce tremendously (Shortliffe, 465). More, this introduction of healthcare IT systems can save a huge amount of administrative costs and a significant amount of money paid in lawsuits by the doctors and hospitals. The predicted efficiency of this system has led to several major health insurance companies to force their client hospitals and physicians to adopt these systems. Although, the system offers less than what the current era and its complexities require, the electronic health records will surely help to provide a head start into professional healthcare and build safer and healthier future for US. Methodology In this section, researcher will lay attention on how the material was gathered and what resources were employed. Two different processes will gather all the information required for the analysis. The first method that will aid in information gathering is secondary research. This will include a deep and focused study of books, journals, scholarly articles and all types of important literature, which can be associated to the topic anyway. This will not only help in laying the foundation of the research and giving the head start by providing information on what is already known, but will also help in identifying what has already been done and so the research may not prove to be redundant. However, since secondary research does not amply fulfill the needs of research methods as it just looks into what is already been done, primary research will also be incorporated. This research mode will analyze the impact of Obama’s mandate on healthcare organizations. In this regard, questionnaires will be under distribution in cross-sectional manner amongst volunteers, which will address the question of different issues related to Obama’s healthcare plan and specifically, its mandate of electronic medical records. Hence, the use of secondary research tools will initiate the research process and direct it in the proper direction whereas the primary research will help in rectifying the findings with the literature and counter-check the results derived from secondary research. Moreover, the researcher will employ the quantitative method to analyze the data. In addition, the researcher will be putting efforts to utilize the below technique to calculate sample size for quantitative analysis: Formula: SS = Z 2 * (p) * (1-p) c 2 Where: Z = Z score (1.96 is taken for 95% confidence level in accordance to distribution table) p = percentage (50%), expressed as decimal (0.5 utilized for sample size) c = confidence interval, taken in decimal form (for ±5, = 0.05) (Caputi & Balnaves, pp. 42-47) SS= Sample Size (1.96)2 * (0.5) * (1-0.5) = 0.9604 = 384.16 (0.05)2 0.0025 Confidence Level: 95% Confidence Interval: 5 Sample Size 384 (Rounded up) Timeline # Task Name Date Date Date Date Date Date Date Date Date Date 1 Theoretical Framework 1st week 2 Compliance of Proposal 2nd week 3 Secondary Research 3-4th week 4 Analysis of Data 5-6th week 5 Primary Research 7-9th week 6 Distribution of Questionnaires 10th week 7 Collection of Questionnaires 12th week 8 Analysis 13-15th week 9 Rough Draft of Dissertation 16-18th week 10 Final Submission 19th week Anticipated Outcomes It is anticipation of the researcher that outcomes of the proposed research will be very effective in identifying precise impact of Obama’s healthcare plan in terms of effects of its mandate of electronic medical records nationally. The researcher expects that the outcomes will help healthcare organizations, as well as individuals interested in this field in preparing for the application and implementation of this mandate in the country that will be beneficial for US healthcare industry. Works Cited Caputi, Peter & Balnaves, Mark. Introduction to Quantitative Research Methods. Sage Publications, 2001. Lehmann, Harold P. Aspects of electronic health record systems. Birkhäuser, 2006. Shortliffe, Edward Hance. Biomedical informatics: computer applications in health care and biomedicine. Springer, 2006. Bibliography Malhotra, M. Umang. Solving the American Healthcare Crisis. iUniverse, 2009. Lachman, V. D. Ethical Challenges in Healthcare. Springer, 2009. Read More