Thursday, November 7, 2013

Key Informant Interviews Begin


Blog Post 8
One of the goals of my practicum was to interview registrars from other catchment regions in order to get first hand accounts from the people responsible for maintaining the Pacific registries.  The first registrar interviewed was from the Northern Marianas Islands. The interview covered the following questions:
o   Are private clinics compliant with timely reporting of cancer cases?
o   What are the CNMI’s screening guidelines for cervical cancer? For colorectal cancer?
o   In what ways could the registrar strengthen its services?
o   Could it advocate for more community outreach or encourage a different way for health professionals to approach cancer screening and diagnosis or increase its staff?
o   Is there a problem with underreporting?
o   Does the registrar collaborate with medical referral when keeping track of patients sent off-island or does the report come directly from the hospital providing the service?
Key parts of the interview will probably shed some light on the issues and successes of each districts registry.
Another applicable issue that was brought up in my time at the registry is the Certificate of Need (CON).  The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) use CONs to validate the necessity of a particular program. As stated by the NCSL, “Certificate of Need (C.O.N.) programs are aimed at restraining health care facility costs and allowing coordinated planning of new services and construction.  Laws authorizing such programs are one mechanism by which state governments seek to reduce overall health and medical costs.” This is a very important hurdle when trying to bring in new screening programs in the pacific what comes to mind most is the idea to introduce a colorectal cancer-screening program.

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