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Essays on hospital readmission rates
Essays on hospital readmission rates
Essays on hospital readmission rates
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stationed staff in one area of a hospital ED to treat patients presenting to the ED" (Minott, 2008). This results of this experiment stated that "28 percent of patients diverted back home and avoided hospital readmission" (Minott, 2008). Another study showed that "greater registered nurse hours spent on direct patient care were associated with decreased risk of hospital related death" (Kane, Shamiliyan, Mueller, Duval and Wilt, 2007). This shows that there is a correlation between direct care between healthcare providers and a better outcome amongst patients.
The method that I had stated previously leads to better outcomes because it decreases the amount of hospital readmissions. This is because patients that come to the ED have a slight chance of having their issues resolved. By placing a person at the homes of the patient to provide consistent care for them, their conditions can be monitored and assessed based on their symptoms if they develop. If some symptoms develop that the healthcare provider can solve, than that is one case of a hospital readmission avoided. This could also potentially reduce the costs incurred
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Some of the naysayers would claim that it actually wouldn 't be more cost effective to have providers visit at the homes of the individuals deemed to need continuative care. My rebuttal to that argument would be that it would only be given out on a need required basis and not every patient would receive this simply because they requested. I would also explain to them that this is why we developed a committee for this issue. Another issue that they might try to use against me is that it would not actually stop the readmissions. Also, that the patients will still be readmitted to the hospital either way. I would then refer them to the reports that have already tested out this study in order to silence their argument. That delivering quality care can reduce patient readmission (Kane et al.,
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.
State and federal regulations, national accreditation standards, and clinical practice standards are created, and updated regularly. In addition, to these regulations, OIG publishes a compliance work plan annually that focuses on protecting the integrity of the program, and prevention of fraud and abuse. The Office of the Inspector General examines quality‐of‐care issues in nursing facilities, organizations, community‐based settings and occurrences in which the programs may have been billed for medically unnecessary services. The Office of the Inspector General’s work plan for the fiscal year 2011 highlights five areas of investigation for acute care hospitals. Reliability of hospital-reported quality measure data, hospital readmissions, hospital admissions with conditions
Once the mandate was given to area hospitals not to divert MH patients, each hospital had to figure out how to deal with MH patients in their own organization. This entailed a safe environment for the MH patient, safety for the staff, and the ability to “board” MH patients in the ED. “Boarding” patients in ED’s became necessary because of the lack of inpatient MH beds in the State of Washington.
In the case of nurse staffing, the more nurses there are the better outcome of patient safety. When there enough staff to handle the number of patients, there is a better quality of care that can be provided. The nurses would be able to focus on the patients, monitor the conditions closely, performs assessments as they should, and administer medications on time. There will be a reduction in errors, patient complications, mortality, nurse fatigue and nurse burnout (Curtan, 2016). While improving patient satisfaction and nurse job satisfaction. This allows the principle of non-maleficence, do no harm, to be carried out correctly. A study mentioned in Scientific America showed that after California passed a law in 2014 to regulate hospital staffing and set a minimum of nurse to patient ratios, there was an improvement in patient care. Including lower rates of post-surgery infection, falls and other micro emergencies in hospitals (Jacobson,
Witkoski Stimpfel, Amy , Douglas M. Sloane, and Linda H. Aiken. "The Loger the shifts for hosital nurses, the higher the levels of burnout and patient disstisfaction." Health Affairs 31.11 (2012): 2501-2509. Proquest. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Needleman, J., Buerhaus, P., Pankratz, S., Leibson, C. L., Stevens, S. R., & Harris, M. (2011). Nurse staffing and inpatient hospital mortality. England Journal of Medicine, Retrieved from http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa1001025
There are several possible methods of addressing the healthcare concerns of today. I focused on three ways to address this issue. The first would it be to make electronic records universal. Secondly, focus on patient centered care. Lastly, start healthcare groups throughout the practice of medicine.
Needleman, J., Buerhaus, P., PKankratz, V. S., Leibson, C. L., Stevens, S. R., & Harris, M. (2011). Nurse Staffing and Inpateint Hospital Mortality. The New England Journal of Medicine , 364, 1037-1045.
...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.
6) mentions some critics argue that treating patients should not be considered a business. These critics argue that these initiatives have the chance of negatively affecting patient treatment and “care as the quest for achieving enhanced operational performance may dictate procedures” (Kudyba, 2010, p. 6). I do see where these critics are coming from however, look how far medicine has come and how much has improved. These new protocols and business models are extremely beneficial to not only the hospitals but to the patients, as well. Most nurses and doctors came into this business to help people. Just because they have to follow a specific business model doesn’t change their heart. These protocols have the ability to improve patient weight time, improve care protocols, which saves time and money for both parties, and save lives. There really is no other way to go about this besides treating it as a
Health care organizations are focused on providing high quality and safe patient care. There are numerous organizational factors that may directly affect patient care and outcomes, but one of great importance is nurse staffing. Low nurse staffing levels are a major problem that I have encountered during both my clinical and management experiences. There is a significant relationship between inadequate staffing levels and adverse patient outcomes; however, as I observed during my experiences, there may be increased awareness about this issue, but it has not been sufficiently addressed. In order to ensure patients’ safety and positive outcomes, as well as to improve nurse satisfaction, it is imperative to effectively address low staffing levels.
2 With that being said, most health care facilities place an emphasis on coordinated and integrated interactions between the clinician and patient. This may include open communication, and shared decision making, ensuring that the patient is an active participant in his or her own care. Research shows that when a patient is treated with dignity and respect, and includes the family and caregivers in the decision making, better outcomes are to be reported.
Notably, having higher proportions of nurses working shorter shifts—8–9 hours or 10–11 hours—resulted in decreases in patient dissatisfaction” (Stimpfel et al.). This is essentially saying that the longer the shift length, the more negative outcomes result. This study proves that eight to nine-hour shifts are more effective, and should, in turn, be worked more than longer shifts. This is a problem because hospitals are likely to continue to schedule nurses for twelve hours shifts out of
For a nurse, trying to provide individualized care for a patient is extremely difficult to do, due to dealing with up to 20 patients a day. Assessing a patient’s needs and problems is first and foremost the most important thing for a nurse to do. Nurses are always caught between taking their time with a patient, and sorting out who needs care the most or whose condition is more severe. According to research done by the National Institute of Nursing found on nursingworld.org, patients who received 80% more of their care from RN’s had an 18.7% lower odds of readmission. Under the same circumstances, 1.9% had a shorter length of stay. Additionally, when there is a 10% increase in hiring of nurses, there is also a 10% decrease in the practice’s mortality rate. Some establishments are actually given higher pension compensations for quality of care based on statistics of their patient income and recovery time. This can be based on doctors and their performance, but there are some that are based solely on RN’s as well as the entire nursing staff and their performance with patients. In a private interview, registered nurse Whitney Sharp says “personally, as a charge nurse and a registered nurse, I make sure that the patient is comfortable, is receiving the right treatment and that the patient is monitored at all times. A patient can have a heart attack, loss of breath, or
As reported by Bowron (2010), hospitals will benefit from reducing patient-nurse ratio by saving money. Bowron point out that an adequate staffing ratio could lower hospitals’ costs significantly in the following ways: