Dashboard Analysis and Nursing Plan

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Today health care systems are expected to meet set standards and core measures to earn everything from accreditation and recognition to payment. Reports need to filled to accomplish this, as well as what is being done to improve areas that may not be meeting standards. One way this is done is by utilizing dashboards. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the data from a dashboard and develop a nursing plan for improvement of a low scoring area.

Analysis of the Data

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have recently begun requiring hospitals to report to the public how they are doing on patient care. Brown, Donaldson and Storer Brown (2008) introduce and explain how facilities can use quartile dashboards to transform large amounts of data into easy to read and understandable tool to be used for reporting as well as to determine areas in need of improvement. By looking at a sample dashboard for an inpatient rehab unit a greater understanding of dashboards and their benefits can be seen. The sample dashboard includes four general areas, including nurse sensitive service line/unit specific indicators, general indicators, patient satisfaction survey indicators and NDNQI data. The overall performance was found to improve over time. There were areas with greater improvement such as length of stay, than others including RN care hours and pressure ulcers. The areas of pressure ulcers and falls did worse the final quarter and can be grouped under the general heading of patient centered nursing care. The area of patient satisfaction saw a steady improvement over the first three quarters only to report the worst numbers the final quarter. A facility then takes the data gathered and uses it to form nursing plan...

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