Public Health Commons^™

Retrospective Evaluation Of The Covid-19 Contact Tracing Program At The Maine Center For Disease Control And Prevention, Elisabeth Brewington Mha, Mph, Ben K. Greenfield Phd, Jessica Purser Phd

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Introduction: Despite the widespread use of contact tracing efforts throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there are limited findings available about best practices and recommendations. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention contracted staff to conduct COVID-19 contact tracing from August 2020 through February 2022. A retrospective evaluation of this program was conducted to share lessons learned with public health and health care leaders for future use.

Methods: Contracted contact tracing staff participated in facilitated discussions structured by the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis framework. Three sessions were recorded and transcribed, and qualitative analysis through thematic review and evaluation coding …

Improving The Workflow And Partnership Between Registration And Clinical Staff In An Outpatient Urgent Care Center, Melissa Fairfield, Bailey Eells, Faye Collins, Joyce Cornish, Stephen Tyzik, Joy Moody, Wendy Osgood, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks

Operations Transformation

An outpatient urgent care unit was experiencing challenges in balancing the need to register patients and delivering care in the timeliest manner as possible. Upon examination, it was found that delays were being experienced in patient triage and discharge that resulted in low patient satisfaction scores.

A team of providers was established to review all process steps and a quality improvement project was created to attain a goal of 100% of the time discharge would not be delayed due to incomplete registration.

Baseline metrics demonstrated current numbers of delayed discharges, median time from door to triage as well as door …