Week 3, Assignment 2

Based on the reading assignment in Badke’s book, I learned a few new search methods that proved to be quite helpful. My research topic is basically, “know-how” to begin process improvement on the business side of managed healthcare. Utilizing the keywords in combination with “AND” and “OR” searches helped to filter out the information that didn’t necessarily apply to my research. Additionally, understanding the hierarchy of information reduced the results further.

My first search was simply: “Process Improvement” AND “Healthcare” OR “Health Administration”

This brought up fewer results than the original search for the entire topic; however, there were several eBooks that were completely off target from what I was seeking.

My next search was: “Improvement” AND “Health*” AND “Process”

I came up with even fewer results that seemed to be targeted to what I was looking for. One keyword I noticed that kept reoccurring in my searches of related topics was “Medical Informatics”. While I am familiar with Medical Informatics, it didn’t occur to me to utilize this as a keyword.

My final search was: “Improvement” AND “Health*” AND “Medical Informatics”.

Trying to come up with other keywords proved to be the most frustrating initially, but I was able to actual find what I was looking for by way of the broader searches, eventually narrowing in to what I was seeking. With the new search, I found two useful eBooks that are right on track. Although, one encompasses healthcare as a whole, there is a specific chapter that references tools, and applications that are useful in identifying process improvement.