My second “Adopt A CEO” Day was held last Friday at North Coast Family Health Center, MCDH’s Primary Care and Specialty Care Clinic. I greatly appreciated the time that everyone at NCFHC took in order to make me feel “at home,” while spending the day in our clinic. The staff made sure that I got the full experience including working every aspect of a normal clinic day from Patient Registration in the morning to Medical Records chart pulling and distribution to touring the clinical areas. If you called the NCFHC after lunch on Friday, it just might have been me answering the telephone as well. And I finished the day by touring our Surgical offices in Suite B and helping them keep up with their workload by assembling patient charts for future patient visits. I had always heard about the monumental task of maintaining a paper medical records system for a clinic of this size (we average about 130 patients per day). This was my opportunity to see how our paper system works (or some might say, doesn’t work). On Friday I got a first hand view of why the eventual conversion to electronic medical records will be a huge time saver for some members of the staff (and will probably increase the workload for others). But it is necessary. There is no doubt in my mind that the paperless systems of the future will help us to provide better quality medical care in a more timely manner.
I am enjoying my experience of rotating through all of the hospital departments. I have had numerous requests for me to spend time in other areas and I am looking forward to them all. My next opportunity will be when I spend a day in the Hospital Billing office during the month of November. This continues to be a great way for me to learn more about the responsibilities that our staff have taken on and the great service that we provide to our patients. I continue to be extremely impressed by the men and women that have dedicated themselves to work at Mendocino Coast District Hospital.
