Acute care facilities provide treatment and care for patients with sudden or unexpected illnesses or injuries that may lead to death. Non-acute care facility includes home health care, long term care, residential care, hospice, extended care, rehabilitation, nursing home, adult day care, and geriatric care. Acute Care facility The challenges that all acute care hospitals and facilities faces are the demand for highly specialized services has increased. The US population is constantly aging and the elderly tend to need more acute care services. Because many people lack health insurance, they tend to use emergency rooms in the hospitals as their source of care. The increase demand in acute care prompted hospitals to expand their facility
According to Statistics Canada Report 2013, “life expectancy in Canada is one of the highest in the world” and it is expected to grow, making the aging population a key driver to our health-systems reform. By 2036, seniors in Canada will comprise of twenty five per cent of the population (CIHI, 2011). Seniors, those aged 65 years and older are the fastest growing population in Canada. Currently there are approximately 4.8 million Canadians aged 65 or greater. It is projected that this number will increase to 9 to 10 million by 2036 (Priest, 2011). As the population get aged the demand for health care and related services are expected to increase. Currently, the hospitals in Ontario are frequent faced with overcrowding emergency departments, full of admitted patients and beds for those patients to be transferred to. It has been reported that 20% of the acute care beds in the hospital setting are occupied by patients that do not require acute hospital care. These patients are termed Alternate Level of Care (ALC). ALC is “When a patient is occupying a bed in a hospital and does not require the intensity of resources/services provided in this care setting (Acute, Complex, Continuing Care, Mental Health or Rehabilitation), the patient must be designated Alternate level of Care at that time by the physician or her/his delegate.” (Ontario Home Care Association, 2009, p.1).
Monitoring staff levels is an important factor. Also leveling the flow of patients in and out institutions could help to reduce wide fluctuations in occupancy rates and prevent surges in patient visits that lead to overcrowding, poor handoffs, and delays in care. Studies show that overcrowding in areas such as the emergency rooms lead to adverse outcomes, because physicians and nurses having less time to focus on individual patients. One study found that for each additional patient with heart failure, pneumonia, or myocardial infarction assigned to a nurse, the odds of readmission increased between 6 percent and 9 percent (Hostetter and Klein, 2013). All of which costs the hospital money.
Without question the cost of medical care in this country has skyrocketed over the last few decades. Walk into an emergency room with an earache or the need for a few stitches and you’re apt to walk out with a bill that is nothing short of shocking.
Memorial Medical Center was situated “three feet below sea level, which is on one of the low points in the bowl in New Orleans (Fink, Sheri, 2009).” This hospital served as a “shelter whenever hurricanes threatened: employees would bring their families and pets, as well as coolers packed with food (Fink, Sheri, 2009).” Having 2,000 people taking shelter in this hospital on top of 200 patients, and over 600 workers in one place during a category 5 hurricane, ran a huge risk. This was not something that was assessed, because the author stated, “this is something that citizens who live around the hospital normally do during a crisis like this (Fink, Sheri, 2009).” I also do not think that individuals believed that Hurricane Katrina would have been as bad as it was, because this is the storm that is considered to be a “lesson learned (President George W. Bush, 2005)”.
For many, the statement “psychiatric asylum” conjures up disturbing images such as painful procedures and restrained patients, the creepy facility in the movie Shutter Island, the cruel Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But that image may be outdated.
The cost of Medical equipment plays a significant role in the delivery of health care. The clinical engineering at Victoria Hospital is an important branch of the hospital team management that are working to strategies ways to improve quality of service and lower cost repairs of equipments. The team members from Biomedical and maintenance engineering’s roles are to ensure utilization of quality equipments such as endoscope and minimize length of repair time. All these issues are a major influence in the hospital’s project cost. For example, Victory hospital, which is located in Canada, is in the process of evaluating different options to decrease cost of its endoscope repair. This equipment is use in the endoscopy department for gastroenterological and surgical procedures. In 1993, 2,500 cases where approximately performed and extensive maintenance of the equipment where needed before and after each of those cases. Despite the appropriate care of the scope, repair requirement where still needed. The total cost of repair that year was $60,000 and the repair services where done by an original equipment manufacturers in Ontario.
One of the many problems that we seem to be having is the amount of No Kill Shelters in America. No kill Shelters are shelters in which the animals there are not treated like the “pound” or “dog house.” These shelters do not kill healthy or treatable animals and even if they are not treatable they reserve euthanasia for them as the last resort to trying to save the animals. However, many understand that these some of these dogs can be a menace to society, but every single animal should be able to live. We do not have many of these in this country or if we do we are use the animals for the testing of some of our products. One of the many benefits of No Kill Shelters is the promotion of adopting dogs. Many people do not adopt dogs but they go to breeders which is not a bad idea, but we have many dogs that get killed in pounds every day. Why do we Americans have the say so in when an animals wants to die? With everything there are pros and cons and some of these cons can be the overpopulation of animals , but we do not kill humans if one race/gender is becoming overpopulated. The
The change in terminology from nursing home to nursing facility is an attempt to move away from the stigma related to nursing homes, the isolation of nursing homes, and change the focus of nursing homes. Previously, nursing homes wear viewed as where you go to die, a facility with little regulation and limited collaboration with other facilities. Nursing facilities are collaborative with other facilities, are highly regulated, have a home feel, and focused on treating the whole patient not just the illness. The care provided ranges from intensive (the patient cannot do anything for themselves)
Long Term Acute Care Hospital With today’s technology and the specialized skills of doctors, nurses, and therapists, patients who need long term care for acute problems can obtain these services at institutions known as postacute care providers. One type of facility that falls under this title is the Long Term Acute Care Hospital (LTACH) (Munoz-Price, 2009, p. 438). This paper will discuss services provided by LTACHs, the role of the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) in these facilities, and Medicare reimbursement effected by patient satisfaction surveys. For patients requiring longer acute care than what is generally given at an inpatient acute care hospital, the Long Term Acute Care Hospital is an option. To be admitted to an LTACH, patients are required to have “medically complex situations with a mean length of stay > 25 days” (Munoz-Price, 2009, p. 438 ).
Hospice always patient and families the automaty to decide a choice of end of life care. It allows who prefer to end life in their homes, pain free, surrounded by family and loved ones: Hospice works to make this happen. The focus in on caring, not curing. Hospice utilizes an interdisciplinary team of healthcare professionals and trained volunteers that address symptom control, pain management, and emotional and spiritual support expressly tailored to the patient's needs and wishes. Hospice is not “giving up,” nor is it a form of euthanasia or physician assisted
The nurse to patient ratio is unrealistic in many hospitals. In most cases it is almost impossible to give each patient the true amount of detailed care they really need. This is seen in most cases where there is one nurse assigned to 16 patients and each patient requires a different level of attention. Nurses are pressed for time, forcing them to cut corners, resulting in an increase in nosocomial infections and patient deaths. “The past decade has been a unsettled time for many US hospitals and practicing nu...
Urgent care centers first opened in the United States in the early 1980s (http://www.chcf.org/~/media/MEDIA%20LIBRARY%20Files/PDF/PDF%20N/PDF%20NoAppointmentNecessaryUrgentCareCenters.pdf no appointment needed). The inspiration behind establishing urgent care centers originated when entrepreneurial physicians identified a gap in the industry. As there was a shortage of primary care physicians who lacked flexibility and extended office hours patients were forced to turn to emergency rooms for non-emergency treatment. As a result, emergency rooms became crowded with low risk patients that did not need immediate care. Consequently, overcrowding resulted in long wait times, unsatisfied patients, misdiagnosis, and overworked emergency rooms physicians. Additionally, at least two domains of quality of care, safety and timeliness, are compromised by emergency room crowding (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1553-2712.2008.00295.x/full). Ultimately, in order to remedy such overcrowding urgent care centers were established.
Since the 1990’s, the interest in nursing and the profession as a whole has decreased dramatically and is still expected to do so over the next 10-15 years according to some researchers. With this nursing shortage, many factors are affected. Organizations have to face challenges of low staffing, higher costs for resources, recruiting and reserving of registered nurses, among liability issues as well. Some of the main issues arising from this nurse shortage are the impact of quality and continuity of care, organizational costs, the effect it has on nursing staff, and etc. However, this not only affects an organization and community, but affects the nurses the same. Nurses are becoming overwhelmed and are questioning the quality of care that each patient deserves. This shortage is not an issue that is to be taken lightly. The repercussions that are faced by both nurses and the organization are critical. Therefore, state funding should be implemented to private hospitals in order to resolve the shortage of nurses. State funds will therefore, relieve the overwhelming burdens on the staff, provide a safe and stress free environment for the patient, and allow appropriate funds needed to keep the facility and organization operational.
One of the issues involving health care and the aging population is majority of health profession employees being a percentage of the aging population. With the knowledge of health profession employees being a factor in the aging population puts a strain on doctors and nurses that come into the workforce after ones have retired. The fewer employees there are, the greater the work load will become on one person. It is imperative for each nurse in a unit to have four patients maximum. Giving more responsibility to one employee does not make the situation less of a challenge, it more so puts people’s lives at a greater risk of danger. The new demands placed on the health care system for health services will not only include a need for more workers, but also require changes in the way services are provided.
8. Residential care facilities: A non-medical community-based building that provide the care includes meals, medication supervision, activities, and transportation to those who can no longer care for themselves.