Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

The Role Of Telehealth In Reducing Hospital Readmissions For Heart Failure Patients, Tommy Lee Bratcher

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Heart failure affects over six million people annually, and is expected to increase to over eight million by 2030. Over 60 million people live in the rural United States. Telehealth is a tool to improve access to care, provide early intervention, and follow up with patients within 48 hours of a hospital discharge. Utilizing Telehealth to conduct a medication reconciliation within 48 hours of discharge to address any medication errors or admission, and reinforce adherence is a way to improve access to care to those living in rural areas.

Health Equity & Obesity Management: An Improvement Project In A Federally Qualified Healthcare Center In Central Harlem, Brianna Bouchez

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

Description of the problem: Obesity is a growing healthcare problem worldwide with extraordinary costs to the individual's health and the healthcare system. Individuals most affected by obesity include socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals, often with limited resources to seek specialized care.

Available knowledge: Various weight-loss interventions exist but access and success rates vary. Weight loss is often modest and additional factors such as social determinants of health, health literacy, and patient motivation are all factors important to the success of an intervention.

Specific Aims: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to improve self-regulatory weight loss behaviors and increase weight loss …

Increasing Advance Directive Rates In Primary Care: Implementation Of A Redesigned Form, Abbie Cheatham, Samereh Abdoli

Graduate Publications and Other Selected Works - Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Background: Less than half of individuals 65 and older have completed an advance directive despite evidence to their benefit. Lack of advance directives can have emotional and financial consequences for the family and individual. A major barrier to advance directive completion is the high literacy level most state sponsored forms are written at, with the average form written at a high school level. Methods: This quality improvement project was a three-month trial to increase the number of advance directive rates at a primary care clinic in the Knoxville area. Five Wishes, written at an 8th grade reading level was …

The Implementation Of A No-Show And Cancellation Policy In The Primary Care Setting: Quality Improvement Project, Dwayne Hall

DNP Projects

The purpose of this quality improvement project is to evaluate the implementation of a no-show and cancellation policy in an urban out-patient primary care setting. The high occurrence of patient no-shows and cancellations in primary care settings is a persistent problem affecting how efficiently healthcare is delivered. No-shows occur when a patient makes an appointment and does not attend the appointment. It diminishes the practice opportunity to schedule other patients in the missed appointment time slot, thus leading to a loss of revenue. It tends to affect practice resource allocation, thereby worsening the quality of healthcare services. The current problem …

Community Health Worker Intervention To Improve Hba1c In Adult Diabetic Patients, Megan Wojtko

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is a disease that disproportionally impacts patients with multiple socioeconomic barriers that are often difficult to address during a primary care visit. Several provider and practice-level barriers also exist including time limitations within the visit and lack of trained staff to help with patient education and case management. Uncontrolled T2DM leads to poor health outcomes and increased healthcare costs. Community Health Workers (CHW) are trained lay persons that can successfully address the patient’s unmet needs and assist with the provider’s recommendations. The purpose of this project was to explore if a CHW led intervention focused …

Improving Vaccination Rates In Pediatric Primary Care, Lauren E. Osbeck

Doctoral Dissertations

Objectives: In a small, rural pediatric primary care clinic, the effectiveness of electronic patient portal reminders were evaluated at improving vaccination rates for school required immunizations.

Methods: A quality improvement project was initiated utilizing The Social Ecological Model. All pediatric patients were sent reminders who were under-immunized. This QI project evaluated the effectiveness of vaccine reminders on the improvement of immunization rates in the clinic

Results: Total number of fully-vaccinated patients within the practice improved (2%) and patients under-immunized decreased by 1%. 87 immunizations were given to patients were given to patients who were under-immunized and an average of 10% …