During her year of research, Sandahl worked full-time in the ER at St. Luke’s Hospital. After moving in 2006 from Florida to Saluda, Sandahl began working in 2009 at St. Luke’s, “the friendliest hospital I’ve ever seen! And I have to thank my manager, Lori Oliver, for working around my ER schedule, school, clinicals and research,” Sandahl said.
Besides the convoluted wording of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Sandahl said she was most challenged by reading state budgets. By the end of the project, she had projected the increase in people and dollars for each of the 50 states, based on the 2014 guidelines for the ACA. She read and digested every word of the 900-page document, reviewed each state budget, crunched Medicaid costs with census reports and analyzed the poverty level of each state.
As the research was presented to her advisory committee, Sandahl said, “They gasped. They were surprised . . .no one realized the effect on Medicaid. Everyone is so focused on the immediate issue, electronic medical records.”