The Hospital Practice Handbook for EAM (Acupuncturist) Practitioners
A source of information for Hospital-practice Acupuncturists and their Hospital Sponsors. This blog is part of the Hospital Handbook project which also includes social network sites to start or continue topic discussion.
Goals: to share collective wisdom of hospital practice
to create community
to encourage each other
to improve our knowledge and practice standards together
I write the following, encouraged by a colleague to share my nonprofit community resource work that I created and continue to direct, as a volunteer, in honor of the focus on women-created or directed resources this month.
I created The Hospital Practice Handbook (HHP) for Acupuncturists and Their Hospital Sponsors 5+ years ago to fill the need for a community resource for hospital & healthcare system-based acupuncturists & their program managers.
The HHP is a community-centered professional networking resource that endeavors to help services from these professionals be more available to patients in federal and civilian systems.
Inpatient acupuncture services are a non-drug way to improve sleep, decrease pain & anxiety, alleviate some side effects of conventional treatment, and reduce the complexity of med profiles. This is especially prominent at Children's hospitals. Research has shown that patient use of inpatient acupuncture services decreases the overall patient length of stay and decreases frequent readmission rates. (So it saves the healthcare system money while improving patient outcomes when you take a long-term view.)
Outpatient & ambulatory acupuncture services are a great addition to many healthcare teams, including behavioral health, functional rehabilitation, oncology, pediatrics, primary care, and even (wonderfully) mother-baby in perinatal and postpartum care.
At the HHP, we are a professional development community that shares & discusses best practices in program standards and employment practices. Both are key aspects to helping maintain, grow, and even initiate programs in these healthcare settings.
Peace & time to breathe/pause to all of my essential worker
colleagues and those who are also making space for positive change in their workplace
or community. 🦋
"To mindfully pause is to interrupt your automatic reactions to
life’s events and the stories that flow from those reactions. Pausing allows
your mind to take a break, so you can be with life as it is vs. how you’d like
life to be. Pausing is also part of a larger cycle of work and renewal, a
rhythmic flow of life. Pausing’s not merely a good idea. It’s a required
nutrient like air or water."
If you found this content useful or insightful, please support this community work. You can support with cups of virtual coffee, sponsor a newsletter, or sponsor a project via the website.
keywords: quality assurance (QA) standards, quality improvement (QI), program leads and program managers, leadership and workplace, metrics
topics: QA/QI and workplace safety and patient safety, the latest standards on patient and workplace safety from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
This report, “provides clear direction that health care
leaders, delivery organizations, and associations can use to make significant
advances toward safer care and reduced harm across the continuum of care.”
“The report harnesses the knowledge and insights of the
National Steering Committee for Patient Safety (NSC) members, including
influential federal agencies, leading health care organizations, patient and
family advisors, and respected industry experts, into a set of actionable and
effective recommendations to advance patient safety.”
“The National Action Plan centers on four foundational
and interdependent areas, prioritized as essential to create total systems
safety. The recommendations in these four areas build on the substantial body
of experience, evidence, and lessons learned that the NSC has gathered and will
test and implement together to allow for future refinements as our
understanding, experience, and evidence evolve over time.”
The National Action Plan has a list of 17 recommendations
“to advance patient safety”. These recommendations fall into the following
sub-categories:
Culture, leadership, and governance
Patient and family engagement
Workforce safety
Learning system
Read this report and its supporting materials on this IHI webpage.
Related HHP Resources
For more about our HHP recommended resources on
leadership, quality assurance issues specific to hospital-based practice, and
program lead/program manager resources, send me a message via the website (for specific recommendations).
Or you may browse this blog with the search terms "workplace", "leadership", "quality assurance", and/or "program lead".
If you found this content useful or insightful, please support this community work. You can support with cups of virtual coffee, sponsor a newsletter, or sponsor a project via the website.
keywords: leadership in integrative health, program leads, program managers, inspiration for the workplace
Leadership Resources at the Hospital Handbook Project
Recommended Reading and More
HHP Leaders Group & Resource
I have been developing a Leaders Group & Resource for program leads and managers over the past couple of years for the Hospital Handbook Project. If you are interested in this, you can contact me via the website with a note about your interest, including why you are interested.
The "Issues in Hospital-based Practice Webinar Series"
This didn't get off the ground again in 2020. So, right now, the plan is to roll the 2020 sessions into the 2021 series. You can sign up now to access the 2020 resources and support the ability to have sessions in 2021.
The "Basics of Being an Employee in a Healthcare System: Focus on Performance Management"
A wisdom-share series with colleague Sandro Abanto, MBA, in a video interview format. Read more about it in this article.
Leadership and Workplace Mondays, a seasonal or monthly review of the weekly theme on the public Facebook page. These are compilations of resources on the topics of leadership & workplace, with a focus on the professional healthcare employee.
If you found this content useful or insightful, please support this community work. You can support with cups of virtual coffee, sponsor a newsletter, or sponsor a project via the website.
keywords: federal practice acupuncturists, prospective practitioners, new hospital employee, position description, program funding, federal student loan forgiveness programs
The Indian Health Service (IHS) now includes licensed acupuncturists in their "eligible providers" category for their student loan forgiveness federal service employment program.
Quote:
"25 U.S.C. 1616a, authorizes the IHS to determine specific health professions for which IHS LRP contracts will be awarded....The list of priority health professions that follows is based upon the needs of the IHS as well as upon the needs of the American Indians and Alaska Natives
(a) Medicine--Allopathic and Osteopathic doctorate degrees
(b) Nursing--Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) (Clinical nurses only).
(c) Nursing--Bachelor of Science (BSN) (Clinical nurses only).
(d) Nursing (NP, DNP)--Nurse Practitioner/Advanced Practice Nurse in Family Practice, Psychiatry, Geriatric, Women's Health, Pediatric Nursing.
If you are a student or prospective practitioner and are interested in starting practice in a large health care system, whether federal or civilian, a good starting place is ourGetting Your Foot in the Door: First Stepse-book and workbook resource.
keywords: telehealth, hospital-based acupuncture programs, remote work options for clinicians, policy and procedures, hospital-based acupuncture & telehealth programs, telehealth & Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM), VA acupuncture telehealth program, inpatient telehealth acupuncture, new program creation, wisdom-sharing, billing & reimbursement, coding for hospital-based acupuncture work, hospital-based acupuncture program manager, hospital-based acupuncturist, hospital-based integrative health programs, telehealth programs and policy for hospital-based integrative health providers, pandemic prep & response for integrative health care providers
Telehealth for oncology patients receiving treatment at
the infusion center(s)
Minute 31 -32
John discusses how the acupuncture team collaborated on
the development of a training/competency program to deliver “TCM Acupuncturist
Directed Therapeutic Strategies”.
Minute 32 -33
Setting up reimbursement for telehealth services by LAcs.
Coding, billing, reimbursement agreement with third party
payors (3PP)
Getting LAcs the access to tech for virtual visits and the
system’s EHR compatibility
keywords and phrases: telehealth, patient-centered care, hospital-based integrative health programs, hospital-based acupuncture programs, teaching self-care, delivering patient care virtually to support patient-led health goals, virtual one-on-one patient care, virtual group patient care classes, supporting patient lifestyle change for better health through the medium of telehealth, benefits of telehealth for providers and for patients in general and during a respiratory virus-based pandemic, upcoming online telehealth roundtable event on hospital-based acupuncture programs
The Hospital Practice Handbook Project's Telehealth Roundtable Pre-Event, Part 1: Why Telehealth? and What Could a Patient-Centered, Integrative Health Telehealth Program Look Like?
The pdf of this presentation will be available in the "recordings access" portion of the Roundtable ticket (Ticket Plus or Recordings Only ticket options).
Meet the community request to publicly present examples of telehealth programs in hospital-based acupuncture practice
minute 8
Defining "Telehealth"
with a citation from a peer-reviewed paper published in May 2020 by a Duke University team
Jedrek Wosik, Marat Fudim, Blake Cameron, Ziad F Gellad, Alex Cho, Donna Phinney, Simon Curtis, Matthew Roman, Eric G Poon, Jeffrey Ferranti, Jason N Katz, James Tcheng, Telehealth transformation: COVID-19 and the rise of virtual care, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa067
minute 9
Telehealth vs. Direct Patient Care
False comparison
Clinical vs. No Clinical care is the true comparison
Leveraging technology
example: the active duty military family communication
minute 11 - 18 The Telehealth Model for Integrative Health
