Master project Document
Summary of proposal
This section of the project will focus on expounding and justifying the recommendations made for each and every task in the RFP response. The RFP response entailed developing recommendations to the tasks that would be fulfilled in the project. This section will substantiate these responses by giving a psychological view on the matter and addressing how the DHMC will benefit from these tasks. Furthermore, the objective will be to expound on the responses in a manner that relates to how health care providers in California should interact with people with disability. It also gives a psychological view on how people with disabilities should be treated and how best to adopt the recommendations into the DHMC project. This will be expounded on each task in the order of how they were presented in the earlier document. This section will also give substantiation of the recommendations in relation to how different literature and theories in psychology function. Historical, current and proposed information will also be synthesized into these recommendations to make it demonstrate the face of I-O Psychology in the field of health care provision. The substantiation will also be directly related to how a psychologist would discuss with the RFP client in an informal setting to justify each recommendation.
Recommendation one
The first and subsequent tasks entailed forming a group that would develop a road map to the development of educational and training resources for people with disability in California. I/O Psychologists will be part of the group of experts that constitute these recommendations. There are several kinds of disabilities such as mental, physical and emotional disabilities. I/O psychologists have a clear appreciation of the emotional and mental feeling of this group of people. There are different kinds of specialists who would be resourceful in ensuring that the right development materials are identified. Disability experts would be required because they know how to deal with disabled people. It is their area of specialization and they can easily identify the materials required for the enhancement of service provision. However, I/O Psychologists come in because they have an in-depth understanding of the behaviour of different people. A psychologist can assess and determine the behaviour and reaction of the health care providers, workers in the health care systems and their attitude towards people of disability. This will be important in helping the team of experts identify educational material that would train these people on how to deliver quality services to disabled people. Psychologists would also come in handy in ensuring that the experts make the right decisions concerning health care employee attitudes.
Only through the expertise of an I-O Psychologist will the team of experts understand the concept of employee attitudes. Psychologists have the knowledge to assess how employees respond to their responsibilities as health care providers. They can also determine the impact of the various development and training material on the level of expertise the employees stand to gain. This will be achieved through assessing the current level of expertise and job attitudes of the group of employees in Californian health care institutions. I/O psychologists will be given a chance to interview employees and ask them how they feel about the current health care system when dealing with disabled people. They will then ask employees on what are their recommendations and what they would like to be changed in the system to improve service delivery and raise employee morale. Psychologists will be tasked with identifying the desires of employees of their employers.
Therefore, the DHMC needs I/O Psychologists because they act as the link between the health care institution employees and the other experts. They are tasked with informing those experts the desires and job attitudes of the employees in most Californian health care organizations. This information will then be used in the identification, development and training of employees as well as identifying the most suitable material to be used. The material to be developed and those to be retained in the new health care system for use by disabled persons should be comprehensible to health care employees. This will help improve their morale hence; their job attitudes will also change for the positive. Employees have to be motivated to work with the new health care program so that they can effectively help disabled clients who visit these centres. The best way to know what the employees’ desire is through hiring I/O Psychologists who will give an accurate analysis of how employees want the system to be and what motivates them.
Recommendation 2
The second recommendation regards updating the health care system to conform to the latest technology. The world is constantly evolving due to the technological progress around the world. The main objective of developing new technology is to ensure that it is easy to work out things than it was in the past. In fact, most of the technological discoveries in the recent past have been all about helping human beings store information and make work easy. In the health care system, data collection, storage and maintenance has been the main beneficiary of technological progress.
The DHMC is encouraged to adopt the newest technology in its quest to provide quality services for people with disabilities in California State because of several reasons. Latest technology is always developed as a customised version of the older technology. For example, the current health care system has a data base that stores patient information for all people in the same pool. This information is not differentiated based on the class of patients. It is assumed that the institution handles all patients equally hence; the information is not classified into the types of patient. This makes it difficult for one to identify patient information for patients with disabilities from the rest of the patients visiting these health care institutions. This limitation has been solved by most recent healthcare information systems.
Frequent updating of technological information to meet the needs of the disabled patients is the best option these institutions should select. This is because new technology is usually easier to handle. New technological devices are dynamic in that they are easy to operate by the health care system workers, only if they are given comprehensive training. The work of I/O Psychologists in this recommendations is to analyse the views of health care workers on how the new technology affects them. The psychologists are also tasked with giving employees mental and emotional guidance in preparation for the technological changes in the health care systems. The psychologist meets the employees, talks to them about the benefits of technological change, how they will improve service delivery. This helps maintain a positive job attitude and raise the morale of employees in these health care institutions.
Frequent technological changes to adopt the newest technology available is also crucial in helping disabled patients learn. The patients with disabilities have found it difficult to navigate through the health care systems in the past because of the complications. However, the introduction of new technology, which is easy to use when training is done, is crucial in changing this trend. Psychologists and other experts hired by the DHMC will provide the necessary training to clients so that they learn how to use the new technology that changes frequently with the discovery of new technology. The experts may be knowledgeable in terms of dealing with people with disabilities but they cannot analyse the behaviour of these people during the training process. Therefore, it is important to have I/O psychologists, who will offer their expertise in analysing the behaviour of disabled patients during the testing of new technology and training of these target group to use the new technology. It is the expertise of I/O psychologist that will be relied on when developing technology that suits people with disability. Psychologists will have sessions with various patients with different kinds of disabilities, listen to their thoughts and ideas on the current technology and the changes they would like to see in the health care sector. The recommendations of the psychologists will be used when developing the new technology.
Changing technology often is a risky approach when dealing with people with disability. Therefore, the experts involved in designing the new technology will be required to rely on the feedback gotten from psychologists. Psychologists will be the link between the stakeholders in the health care systems in California and the team of experts. Therefore, psychologists must be ready to give an accurate analysis of the disabled community, the employees in health care societies and the other stake holders in California. The DHMC should constitute a team of experts who will be ready to assess and determine the areas of the California health care system that require changes.
Recommendation 3
The third recommendation is focused on secluding the disabled group of patients from the other patients. This is a detailed process that requires comprehensive analysis on how to go about it. It is also an issue that raises concerns on whether the DHMC has the necessary resources to handle this project to its completion. In the initial RFP, this recommendation is a continuation for the long run to enhance the welfare of the disabled people in California. The separation of databases also includes creating a special unit in the Californian hospitals for disabled patients.
This exercise is important because currently the health care organizations have lumped patient information for both the disabled and the other normal patients. This creates a lot of confusion for the disabled, who find it hard to navigate through the system. Patients with normal ability often find it easy navigating through the system because they have the mental, physical or emotional capacity to handle the complications of the system. In California, the same system is expected to serve people with disability. Some of the employees in the health care system are overworked as they seek to serve both the normal and the disabled people.
Therefore, the separation of the health care system of the disabled from that of the normal patients has a lot of benefits. First, this is an opportunity for the DHMC to develop a system that s specifically meant for disabled patients only. Having such a system will enable the team of experts to customize the system so that it becomes easier for these patients than the current system. I/O Psychology is important in developing a system that is customised for disabled people. Only a team consisting of experienced I/O psychologists would be able to identify the components disability patient system. This is because they understand the various things that meet the needs of disabled people. For instance, disabled people need assistance when navigating through the health care system. The emotional, mental or physical disabilities makes the disabled people slow in understanding how to navigate the system.
Developing a new system specifically for the disabled people in California will be crucial because it will mean that there are special employees to handle these people. Currently, the health care system is complicated in that doctors attend to both the normal and disabled patients at the same time. The new system would allow for the training of employees who will be specifically be there to assist the disabled. Giving full time attention to the disabled will reduce the work load that currently burdens these employees hence; it will increase their productivity.
Creating a separate database for the storage of information on the disabled people is also important because it helps avoid confusion. The database can be simplified so that people with disabilities can have the chance to go through them. For example, there should be facilities such as braille, hearing aids, eye glasses and magnifying glasses and wheel chairs for people with disability to navigate through the system easily. Furthermore, the system should also cater for people with emotional disability by hiring psychologists who offer counselling and emotional help for such people. The separated system will also be easy to operate for employers who will have a less amount of data to deal with. Having a system that has specifically information on disabled people, which is then further classified into various kinds of disability and specifications, is much easy to operate. The current system stores information for both the normal and the disable hence; by the time an employee retrieves information for a disabled patient, a lot of time will have been wasted. Therefore, it is important that a new and separate health care system is developed to meet the needs of the disabled members of the society.
Recommendation 4
The final recommendation focuses on the budgetary allocation to the health care system in California State. The state currently has allocates almost 15 percent of its budget on health care. This is a very good amount that is able to meet the various health care projects. However, the planning panel tasked with budgeting this money gives very little to the improvement of the services given to people with disability. There is a need to increase the budget allocation for the provision of the health care services to disabled people because of several factors. California is one of the most populated states in USA hence; the number of people with disabilities is quite high. With less than 5 percent of the health care budget allocation being channelled to this group of people, it is almost impossible to provide quality services to a huge population of disabled citizens.
The DHMC constitutes of experts in the health sector. However, the number of qualified I/O Psychologists in the department is too small. More so, the department has few psychologists posted to the health care facilities across the state. There is a need to increase the budget allocation so that the DHMC is able to employ more psychologists and specialized doctors and nurses to meet the demand for their services. Currently, the number of psychologists per health care facilities is almost 1:5. This is a burden. The same also applies for doctors and nurses who have the specific training to treat people with disability in the state. The increase budget will be used to train psychologists, doctors and nurses on how to deal with patients with disabilities. Increasing the labour force in the department will have a positive impact because it helps change the job attitude of the existing employees. The reduced work load and the availability of people who understand what they are dealing with in form of disabled patients will improve the productivity and morale of employees.
The increased budget is also necessary in order to train the existing labour force on how to cater for people with disabilities. The existing group of employees has minimal knowledge on how to deal with people with disabilities. This reduces the quality of service provided. Furthermore, it demotivates the employees since they do not understand how to deal with the disabled clients.
The DHMC also needs more budgetary allocation channelled towards the improvement and of its health care system for the disabled. In the earlier recommendations, it is recommended that a new health system is developed specifically for the group of people with disability. This will require a lot of finances to achieve. More so, the need to adopt the newest technology so that it becomes easy to run the health care system needs money to pay for the technological equipment. The money can also be used to pay for maintenance services in the health care centres.
Conclusion
The recommendations made in the RFP response were aimed at improving the on the health care service provision for people with disabilities in California. This is because the RFP had a limited budget yet there is so much to be achieved by the DHMC hence; the introduction of new technology and hiring more individuals could only be presented as a recommendation. These recommendations are also presented in relation to the I/O psychology perspective. This information is also presented in relation to the available information in the California health system and psychology theories. Therefore, these recommendations deserve consideration by the DHMC in order to help improve the delivery of health care services for people with disability in the state of California.
References
Andersen, R. M., Rice, T. H., & Kominski, G. F. (2011). Changing the U.S. Health Care System: Key Issues in Health Services Policy and Management. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Brown, E. G. (2013, February 13). REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP) MATERIALS AND OUTREACH TARGETED TO INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES REGARDING THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT RFP NO.12MC-SA021. Retrieved May 14, 2013, from Department of Managed Health Care.
Tonascia, S. (1986). Clinical trials: design, conduct, and analysis. London: Oxford University Press.
