Week 3: Keeping the Momentum Going

This week was a bit slower in terms of research but still productive. I continued working at the pediatric practice in Brighton Beach, which has been giving me a ton of real world context that I honestly could not get from any academic article.

At the office this week, I got more hands-on experience with the administrative side of running a practice, specifically dealing with multiple insurance companies and understanding how the billing and claims process actually works in real time. It is one thing to read about how complicated insurance billing is in a study, it is a completely different thing to sit there and actually work through it. This week we had a patient with special needs who was not comfortable coming inside the office. The doctor, without hesitation, left the office to go help the patient outside and make sure they received the care they needed. It was a really powerful moment to witness. The patient needed this visit in order to be cleared to attend school, so the stakes were real. But it also made me think about something I had read about and heard about before, which is the tension doctors face between truly caring for their patients and keeping their practice running efficiently. On a busier day, that same level of individual attention may not have been possible, and that patient might have left without the care they needed. It raised a bigger question for me about how independent practices, already stretched thin financially, are supposed to handle unique situations like this without it costing them. I do not have a clean answer, but it is something I will be thinking about as my research develops.

On the research side, I spent time cold emailing pediatricians across NYC to try to line up more interviews. It was a valuable experience in itself because I had to learn how to introduce myself professionally, explain my project clearly, and make a compelling case for why a busy doctor should take time out of their day to talk to a high school student. I have emailed around 30 doctors and it has been very hard to get responses, which is actually something I predicted in my senior project proposal. I flagged early on that getting doctors to open up about detailed financial information would be one of my biggest challenges, so I also planned for it. My solution is to shift more heavily toward the academic and article based side of my research, using interviews as supporting evidence rather than the backbone of the project. I have one more interview lined up which I am looking forward to, and I decided to lean heavily into the peer reviewed data side of things. After thinking about it, I think the most strategically sound approach is to build a strong foundation of literature and let the interviews serve as real world support for what the research is already showing. It just makes the most logical sense for the kind of paper I am trying to write.

Overall, even in a slower week there is always something new to learn, whether it is in the office or through the research process itself.

Thanks for reading, see you in the next one!