The Importance Of Hospital Experience

In recent years there has been a marked change in the inpatient hospital experience. Many of these changes are related to funding and payment. Insurance companies no longer reimburse hospitals for providing services, but have begun to provide payment based on hospital performance measures (Knudson, 2013, C8). Adverse events that occur during a patient’s stay now leads to financial loss. Hospitals have to absorb the additional treatment cost of “never events” such as injuries from falls, infections from urinary catheters, and pressure ulcers that are acquired during a patient’s admission (Agency for Healthcare Administration, 2012). Patient perception of the hospital environment is increasingly important with the ability of potential consumers

(2011), patient mortality increased by 2% when nurse staffing was below target and increased by 4% when the patient was on a unit with “high turnover”, which refers to the admissions and discharges. The authors also point out that nursing workload increases when admitting, discharging, and transferring patients (p. 1039). Once a patient arrives to the unit, the nurse has to perform physical assessments, obtain a detailed health history, document home medications, orient the patient to the room and unit, provide education regarding their conditions, initiate doctor orders for procedures and medications, initiate vascular access, and so forth. During this lengthy period of time, the other patients are not directly receiving care. If the acuity level of those other patients is high or there are many other patients, adverse events may occur. Hinno et al (2011) states that this increase in workload increases risk for hospital acquired infections, falls, pressure ulcers, and medication errors (p. 1585). By staffing appropriately, the authors state a decrease in mortality, nosocomial infections, and failure to rescue rates. This translates into financial loss as insurance does not pay for “never events” (Needleman et al.