Field Placement: Los Angeles County Department of Health Services - Office of the Medical Director
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Preceptor: Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, MPH, the Director of Quality Assurance Office
Student Name: Stella Sarkisyan
Year: 2004

I chose to do an internship at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Office of the Medical Director during Summer of 2004. I worked in the Quality Assurance Office under the supervision of my preceptor Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, MPH, the Director of Quality Assurance Office. The mission of the Los Angeles County Quality Assurance office is to protect and improve the health of Los Angeles County residents through facilitating and coordinating performance measurement and improvement by all components of Public Health. The goal of the office was to measure and improve the performance of the Public Health organization that serves Los Angeles county. There are currently specific initiatives to track measures of performance both at the organizational level and within each of the nearly 38 distinct "programs" that make up LA Public Health.

Throughout the twelve weeks I spent with DHS, I divided my time on a few different projects. The first couple of weeks I worked on collecting and analyzing data from a survey that had already been administered to the county employees (within the 38 “programs”). The survey seeked to identify the expressed training needs of the county employees with special emphasis on quality, performance and evaluation, the survey tool attempted to assess both interest and knowledge level of twelve training topics. After the first couple of weeks at DHS, I began to work on a project that was to be a part of a larger project for the entire LA County Public Health Dept. and that was to attempt to identify and document discrepancies in way of doing business by various county SPA clinics. This project was especially challenging given the eight clinics in four different Service Planning Arias (SPAs).

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