Opportunity to Improve the Overall Quality of Care Impacts of Underperformance on the Community
CareM Medical Center can prevent risking patients’ lives by addressing the issue of high waiting time. In the current setup, the best way to lower waiting is to ensure that the ER has adequate beds to accommodate more patients as they receive SUD services. If possible, administrative interventions to increase the number of registered nurses to match the State’s threshold are crucial. Doing so will ensure that nurses are more empowered and supported to serve patients irrespective of the increasing numbers.
Ethical Action
Health care facilities operate as they follow administrative and legal policies. Internal and external policies guide them, and violation of the set policies has severe legal and ethical implications. In the current setup at CareM Medical Center, a huge portion of the patients visiting the emergency room are referred by outside physicians. They (outside physicians) refer many patients to the ER since they are not professionally mandated to provide complete SUD care. Outside physicians lack admitting privileges. They cannot admit a patient directly, implying that almost all the medical center’s admissions come through the ER. Accordingly, it is crucial to increase outside physicians admitting privileges to reduce unnecessary visits to the ER. Visits to the ER should be reserved for critically ill patients.
Responsible Stakeholders
Stakeholders play a critical role in the running of health care facilities. Their decisions have huge implications on how an organization functions and policies made every day. To improve waiting time at CareM Medical Center, the best-positioned group of stakeholders is the quality service board. The board consists of the facility’s administration, and patients, community, and legal representatives. Its work is quality assurance and searching for resources to enhance performance, particularly donation. The board is also responsible for policy formulation to ensure that services meet the expected quality standards.
Importance of Action
Always, health care facilities should be concerned when their services fail to meet the desired benchmark. Underperformance has huge implications on the quality of care and patient safety, and interventions to match the legally and ethically set standards are imperative. When facilitated to serve, nurses will also be motivated to offer their services, and the chances of burnout will reduce. CareM Medical Center will also be safe from legal violations. Such interventions will enable the facility to continue serving the community diligently as its mission statement envisages.
Supporting Improved Benchmark Performance
The stakeholder group can apply several strategies to support improved benchmark performance. It can improve interprofessional collaboration between outside physicians and the ER nurses to prevent unnecessary ER visits. When outside physicians and ER nurses collaborate to assess a patient, physicians would be more empowered to admit patients directly without an ER visit. However, such a change in the work structure needs some policy formulations to advance the role of outside physicians that is somewhat limited.
In conclusion, quality health delivery is challenging when a health care facility is underperforming in some areas. Dashboard metrics are reliable reference points to determine whether a health care facility performs as the local, state, or federal laws obligate. CareM Medical Center’s close assessment shows that it needs to improve on nurse: patient ratio, average waiting hours, and the number of beds in the ER. Policy and administrative interventions to change the current state include giving outside physicians more admission privileges, increasing the number of nurses, and looking for financial resources to buy more beds in the emergency room.
References
Dembosky, A. (2020, Dec 30). California is overriding its limits on nurse workloads as COVID-19 surges. npr. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/30/950177471/california-is-overriding-its-limits-on-nurse-workloads-as-covid-19-surges
Gutsan, E., Patton, J., Willis, W. K., & PH, C. D. (2018). Burnout syndrome and nurse-to-patient ratio in the workplace. Marshall University. https://mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1196&context=mgmt_faculty