Ethnographic Summary
Obi Madukoma
Care Coordinator Population Health – Mishawaka Medical Center
Alexandra Charron interviewed Obi Madukoma, Care Coordinator Population Health, from the Family Medicine Center at the Mishawaka Medical Center. She was able to provide insights on the transportation issues and voiced that she believed part of the issue was due to lack of marketing and awareness of the resources available.
Date: 3/3/17
Type: In Person Interview
Location: Family Medicine Center St Joseph Health Mishawaka Medical Center
Team Participants: Led by Alexandra Charron accompanied by Joe Krause
User Characteristics:
- Care Coordinator
- Patient facing employee of SJHC
- Jack of all trades position
- Helps patients when they have identified issues
- Works in the Family Medicine Center with primarily low income patients
- Helps patients when they can’t afford appointments, medication or if they have health care and or financial issues
- Patients are referred to her
Memorable Quotes
- “ People and staff in house don’t know about the resources. There is a communication gap”
- “ The nurses and secretaries are good at transportation assistance so I don’t usually have to deal with that a lot”
- “ The patient has to make the calls to medicaid most of the time as when i call medicaid says “just ask the patient to call us instead” as it usually involves proprietary information”
- “ I am like a coach/ navigator for the patients”
Key Insights:
- Unawareness is a big issue. Patients and often staff do not know about the resources that are available.
- Part of the problem is that there is not enough marketing for the resources available and when people find they have a problem they often don’t know where to look for a solution.
- If patient have insurance and Obi knows what kind she is able to help them and direct them to the specific resources for their insurance type.
- Nothing is centralized. Each clinic and office does different things and they don’t work together with things such as transportation.
- Big problem is that patients are often late to appointments and office has a policy that if you are more than 15 minutes late to an appointment you will have to reschedule. (see image below taken in office)
- The outreach department does provide resources for seniors and low income people but the outreach department is not involved with everyone in the system
- Lots of issues with using approved transportation as medicaid only supports certain transportation services.
Other Findings:
- A lot of the burden to schedule transportation sits on the patient who might be unable to do so or not know how to do it.
- This is partially due to medicaid wanting to speak to the patient directly
- There is a lack of information on the resources available.
Environment:
- In the front office/ reception area of the Family Medicine Center
- Family Medicine Center St. Joseph Hospital Main Campus