It is your first week as the health information supervisor of areception facility in a prison system. During your initialinterviews with the staff, you hear complaints of staffingshortages and poor relationships with other facilities in thesystem. There are so few trained medical staff that guards and somerecord technicians have taken on the responsibility for documentinginmate histories. Members of the medical staff know they areperforming duplicate lab tests, but the medical records are notavailable to verify previous tests and corroborate inmatecomplaints. You also learn that several inmates are filinglaw-suits claiming deliberate indifference because a tuberculosistest was not performed on another inmate who infected his cellmatesafter being transferred from your facility. Because the medicalrecords are stored by the discharging facility, they are notavailable to the reception center. You know that, by law, the staffmust complete a health status within 24 hours and a physical examwithin 7 days, but most inmates are transferred after 4 days, whichdoes not provide enough time to transfer records. A cursoryexamination of the electronic information system indicates that itlacks relevant data on prescription drugs, dates of tests, HIV(human immunodeficiency virus) status, and allergies and,therefore, cannot compensate for a lack of medical records. Thestaff turnover rate at the facility aver-ages 40%.
1. How will you prioritize the issues you identify?
2. What recommendations would you make?
