benefit CHF patients, as it will allow for a culture of disease prevention and chronic disease management to proliferate within the community. Creating an RN facilitated outpatient CHF clinic, as an extension of ORMC’s main campus would be extraordinarily beneficial to hospital finances, as well as the health of the community. Telemonitoring, education, and physical exercise will allow patients to achieve a higher quality of life and become more independent. Education regarding disease management will allow patients to truly comprehend what is happening to their body, and the consequences that will arise from improper self-care. This will be further reinforced through telemonitoring, as a clinician will be able to see the patient’s vital signs in real-time, having the ability to contact them immediately and spare them from suffering further readmissions, complications, or death. With the largest group of patients at ORMC being discharged for the most severe of the three heart failure DRGs, (as seen in Table 3) it is obvious that this population is in need of an intervention that focuses on managing this chronic disease. Completing the research for this intervention was incredible because it was an actual service line being explored by the hospital. With a successful cardiac catheterization program already up and running, ORMC is looking to expand its cardiology department, as well as expand its outpatient presence, and CHF clinic will allow this to happen. Luckily, the data extensively supported the creation of this new service line, which made research an even more positive experience, as it was going in the right direction. This project taught me a great deal about the migration of healthcare and what living and working during this period of healthcare reform is really going to mean for Americans. The most challenging aspect was managing the volume of quantitative data and the amount of reading that went into fully understanding all of the aspects of the CHF clinic.
While I was not the one preparing the business plan, after reading the finished product that was written by the nursing director for cardiology, I discovered many more details about the project that hadn’t even occurred to me. Key pieces that were crucial to the plan such as the organizational chart for employees, SWOT analysis, and a sequential timeline from establishing a steering committee for the creation of the clinic, to the actual go-live date hadn’t even crossed my mind. I truly valued every step of this project, as well as my fieldwork experience in its entirety, because I was never restricted from information. Having the ability to sit with financial analysts and collect live data from just days beforehand was profoundly significant for me, because I know that without it I would have been stuck with state data from two years prior. With such strong evidence in support of this intervention, viable finances, and an aggressive desire to expand, I predict the creation of an outpatient CHF clinic at Orange Regional Medical Center to be a reality in the future; and I am grateful to have taken part contributing in research. References Arnwine, D. L. (2002). Effective governance: the roles and responsibilities of board members. Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center), 15(1), 19–22. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015). Heart disease. Retrieved from http://cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016). Sodium fact sheet. Retrieved from http://cdc.gov/dhdsp/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fs_sodium.htm