Staffing and Productivity
The nurse executive is responsible for budget planning for the division. Areas of focus include strategies to improve productivity and feasible tactics to reduce agency staff and overtime (OT) for the division. Identified in this paper is the importance of operational and financial performance indicators for the organizations internal goals. Focus on benchmarking through data analysis is vital. In addition, setting realistic goals that are compulsory to promote cost savings, while maintaining patient safety as a priority is important in creating an improved patient experience. In planning for modifications to obtain a favorable budget, adjusting full time equivalents (FTEs) to fluctuating volumes is important. To improve the productivity plan effectively are evaluation and management of scheduling, staffing, and skill mix are necessary to obtain favorable productivity.
Division Productivity
Nursing productivity relates both to proficiency of care provided and the effectiveness correlated to quality of that care. The division’s productivity exemplifies the organization’s ability to curtail resources for each of the units of services without undesirably affecting patient care. Poor productivity measurements relate to the amount of input resources used without significantly increasing the output as specified by Dunham-Taylor and Pinczuk (2010). The majority of units exceeded productivity expectations, while others do not meet expectations. There were several reasons why productivity did not meet target-such as utilization of FTEs not adjusted for actual volumes, agency and overtime hours.
FTE Utilization
Significant areas of the summary report where variances between actual and targeted FTEs were not fl...
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...ed productivity goals.
Summary
Nurse executives need a systematic understanding of the budget planning process and the challenges that organizations face in sustaining favorable performance. Utilizing this acquired knowledge will enable achievement of desired goals to improve the productivity of the division. Benchmarking provides important operational and financial indicators in addressing realistic goals and reducing unwanted agency staff, while adjusting FTEs for a cost savings favorable budget. Continuous development with best practice for strategic planning of the budget with scheduling and appropriate skill mix is essential for the nurse executive to evaluate to ensure ultimate connotation. I really appreciate the following quote addressed by Finkler & McHugh (2008), “Benchmarking should be used to show the way to true improvements in productivity” (p. 441).
This article is a comprehensive look at staffing on hospital units. It used a survey to look at characteristics of how the units were staffed – not just ratio, but the experience and education level of the nurses. It evaluated several different categories of hospital facilities – public versus private, academic medical centers versus HMO-affiliated medical centers, and city versus rural. It is a good source because it shows what some of the staffing levels were before the status quo of the ratio legislation passed in California. It’s main limitation as a source is that it doesn’t supply any information about patient outcomes.
When horrific crimes occur in large cities, many of them can be chalked up to gang violence or to the larger population of that specific city. But when horrific crimes happen in small cities like Lincoln, Nebraska, people begin to ask questions like who did this and why. In 1958, a nineteen year old man named Charles Starkweather put the entire state of Nebraska and possibly the entire nation in a state of terror. With his murder spree taking only three days, Starkweather had collected a body count of ten bodies, including two teenagers and a young child. Understanding Starkweather’s past and state of mind begins to answer the second question of why.
Without participating in a longitudinal study, it is difficult to truly assess the efficacy in mandating nurse staffing ratios. It is difficult to measure the benefits of mandated staffing due to numerous confounding variables. These confounding variables include the resources available at specific hospitals in addition to the populations that they serve. Hospital volume, RN job satisfaction and the relationship between physicians and nurses have also been shown to affect patient outcomes (Duval et al., 2007).
Many health care professionals are wondering why shortage transpired when managed care cost initiatives, implemented throughout the country, are dramatically decreasing the length of patient stays (Upenieks, 2003). In fact, such a situation should be resulting in a nursing oversupply. As the nursing shortage ensues, the need for recruiting and retaining highly skilled nurses committed to the organization will become necessary to maintain high-quality patient care. The recent national nurse shortage has resulted in higher nurse workloads; fewer support resources, greater nursing dissatisfaction, and burnout, making it more difficult to provide optimal patient care (Upenieks, 2003). The primary role of nursing is to provide the best possible care to patients.
This case study is intended to analyze the movie When a Man Loves a Woman, and to provide worst and best case scenarios for treatment. This film depicts a family that is struggling with a family member’s alcoholic dependency. The mother, Alice Green, is a school counselor who has an addiction to alcohol that is causing her to experience problems in her life as a result of her use. Her husband, Michael Green, is an airline pilot that is very protective Alice and often steps in and takes over for Alice, even in her role as a mother. Alice has two children, Jess and Casey, which also bear witness to their mother’s deterioration from alcohol addiction.
Finkler, S. A., Kovner, C. T. & Jones, C. B. (2007). Financial management for nurse
Thousands of nurses throughout the nation are exhausted and overwhelmed due to their heavy workload. The administrators do not staff the units properly; therefore, they give each nurse more patients to care for to compensate for the lack of staff. There are several reasons to why
Nurse to patient ratios are extremely paramount in assisting with overall patient mortality and wellness of our nurses. It is an issues which unfortunately affected by legislation of our government (which is affect specifically on a monetary basis). My research via Academic Search Complete allowed me to identify topics that assist my PICOT question, and enables me to further analyze and research to find out what issues directly affect is matter. Proper nurse to patient ratio, operational costs, government regulation, nurse work life and health, patient wellness, and nursing procedures and duration of those procedures are all affected by this topic and we must ensure that all are properly balanced.
...staff would not be required to put in the overtime to compensate for the lack of workers. Patients would no longer have to suffer the neglect of the staff because he or she was too busy. Making sure the patient gets the best quality care reduces the time spent for recovery. Reducing the time spent for recovery increases the organization’s finances. Providing a safe facility also reduces the expenses on the private hospital’s budget. Ensuring a patient is safe can reduce potential use of ongoing treatment and services. Hiring the appropriate nursing staff needed can save the organization money. Instead of cutting back on staff, more staff needs to be hired to fulfil the needs of the patient. In the economy today, private hospitals need to focus on the overall long term effects of each action opposed to quick reactions resulting in financial strain for the facility.
Nurse leaders must have a thorough understanding of variance reporting because these reports provide information about the differences between an actual budget and a forecasted budget (Finkler, Jones & Krover, 2013). A nurse leader can use data gathered from these reports to better understand budgetary deficiencies, hence allowing him or her to develop more accurate budget forecasts in the future. Variance reports can also help a nurse leader identify the causes of variances. By recognizing the causes early on, nurse leaders can put appropriate actions in place to prevent further exacerbating existing variances. Nurse leaders can also use variance reports as a tool with which to gauge work center productivity.
Bedside nurses want to change staffing levels to assure that they have enough time to both keep up with the constantly evolving health care and to provide safe patient care. Yet, healthcare employers consider that reducing nurse patient ratio is an unnecessary expense that has not been proven to improve quality of patient care (Unruh, 2008). Employers emphasize that raising nursing staffing level is not cost-effective. In fact, in accordance with ANA’s report (2013), a study, in the Journal of Health Care Finance, confirmed that reducing patient-nurse ratios increased hospital costs, but did not lower their profitability. Higher hospital costs were attributed to wages and benefits allocated to newly hired nurses. Yet, according to Cimiotti et.al (20112), it is more costly for hospitals to not invest money on nursing.
Departmental budgeting is a concern in this scenario, the administrator must ensure that all departments are operating effectively and review their operational efficiencies when planning the wider budget. In reviewing the statement of operations data over the last 3 years it appears that operating expenses have risen approximately 11.45% (Hospital Scenario, n.d.). In designing the administrator should review this increase in the cost of operations and attempt to determine why these are
Mandatory staffing is an issue that needs to be addressed on the business side, patient side and the nursing side. According to Rajcki a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in October 2002 linked higher patient-to-nurse ratios in hospitals with increased patient mortality and increased nurse dissatisfaction with their jobs. The study, which looked at outcome data from more than 230,000 surgical patients discharged from 168 hospitals, found that each additional patient per nurse was associated with a 7% increase in the likelihood of patient mortality, and a 15% increase in job dissatisfaction for the nurses. (Rajcki, 2009)
The financial planning tool enables availing of proper funds for staffing. Managers have more insight on operations, and can alter them as required to improve their revenues and quality of healthcare services. The integrated system budget provides a reference point of efficiency at the firm level instead of the system level. The advantage of using integrated budget as a reference is that the information needed can be obtained relatively easily from financial
Write 2 mini case studies. One should recount an effective coaching or counseling situation. The other recount an ineffective coaching or counseling situation. The case should be based on a real event, either from your own personal experience or from the experience of someone you know well. Use principles of supportive communication and listening in your cases.