Assessment 1: Dashboard and Healthcare Benchmark Evaluation
Name
Capella University
NURS_FPX 6004
Instructor Name
July 2024
Dashboard and Healthcare Benchmark Evaluation
Meeting healthcare benchmarks set by local, state, and federal policies is essential for providing high-quality care and ensuring regulatory compliance. Mercy Medical Center’s evaluation reveals significant underperformance in key areas such as eye exams, foot exams, and HgbA1c tests for diabetic patients. Programs like the national diabetes prevention program and state-specific diabetes care standards guide these benchmarks. Issues such as resource allocation, staff training, and patient compliance contribute to these shortfalls. This report examines the impact of these underperformances, identifies contributing factors, and advocates for ethical and sustainable actions to improve overall healthcare performance.
Evaluation of Health Care Benchmark Metrics
An assessment of the dashboard metrics implied that several areas in Mercy Medical Center must align to the benchmark set by local, state, or federal policies related to healthcare performance. However, it should be noted that the percentage of eye exams, foot exams, and HgbA1c tests for diabetic patient enrollees dramatically falls short (Cloete, 2022). The specific percentage is 48% for eye exams, 48% for foot exams, and 60% for HgbA1c tests. These are based on guidelines like the national diabetes prevention program and the state guidelines for diabetes care, wherein routine tests and screenings are required for effective diabetic management conditions (Banday et al., 2020). The disparity and the decrease in these primary examinations depict potential concerns, including funding-related queries, worker training, and customers’ adherence to recommended programs. These shortcomings outline organizational performance gaps that might negatively impact patients’ status and the quality of care delivered, which underlines the importance of addressing these vital domains.
Organizational Performance Shortfalls and Information Gaps
The largest disparities are in eye examination, foot examination, and HgbA1c, all of which are crucial to preventing complications from diabetes. These have hugely diminished, and patients have uncontrolled diabetic complications as far as neuropathy, retinopathy, and cardiovascular complications, among others (Al Hayek et al., 2021). Some of the shortcomings of the data presented on the dashboard include that it is impossible to extract historical patient data for the organization’s assessment and some of the demographical data need to be included. These gaps are as follows: There is a collection of information that presents some of the areas and disparities in the measurement of all the related facts or factors, which has to be closed by enhancing the data collection methods and ensuring conformity in the measurements (Cloete, 2022). Improving these areas will align Mercy Medical Center with healthcare policies, boosting overall performance and patient satisfaction. Addressing deficiencies requires collective efforts from healthcare providers, administrators, and policymakers through ethical and sustainable measures to enhance benchmark performance.
Consequences of Not Meeting Prescribed Benchmarks
The consequences arising from the poor performance in the HgbA1c exam threaten to accomplish the mission and vision of Mercy Medical Center. Cohesion and coordination of care are also impugned, hence leading to poor patient outcomes through increased morbidity and mortality rates. The trust that people have in the organization is eroded due to poor delivery of quality healthcare (Cooksey, 2020). This severely strains the organization’s goals of better patient satisfaction and community health. Moreover, resource allocation becomes an issue as untreated or poorly managed diabetes issues result in exacerbation of illnesses and, hence, more acute and emergency care needs. Another concern is the shortage of healthcare human resources since the increased complexity of diabetes cases leads to a higher demand for staff and human resources, tiredness, or burnout. Organization’s operational costs and losses resulting from violations of federal and state healthcare standards pose financial risks.
Impact on Resources and Support Services
The operational consequences of failure to achieve the set HgbA1c benchmarks entail knock-on effects on several logistical factors (Furman et al., 2020). Healthcare facilities’ physical space and ancillary services, such as pharmacy & and dietary services, are more demanding given patients’ complications, as patient education and counseling spacetients’ education and counseling do not allow for adequate diabetes control. Another possible complication within the community is the multicultural population because sometimes it can be problematic to get appropriate patient compliance due to language and other cultural differences in responding to disease treatments (Galicia et al., 2020). Other human resources of healthcare organizations, including cleaning and dietary departments, also reveal that their workloads have increased, and they are under pressure to be more productive as patients’ needs continue to rise. Such logistical and operational pressures exacerbate challenges in achieving set goals and objectives.
Challenges and Assumptions
Several factors can result in benchmark underperformance, such as low funds, inadequate staffing training, and patients’ nonadherence. The beliefs include explaining that due to financial challenges, the organization may be unable to purchase new tools to enhance the care of diabetes patients or hire many more workers (Imai et al., 2021). There could also be propositions that raising testing frequency rates of HgbA1c will automatically translate to better patient performance and the assumption that the existing financial landscape will enable this. It is possible to note that understanding these assumptions aids in revealing the general impact and developing measures to strengthen the methods dealing with the shortcomings. Meeting challenges requires adequate and appropriate training among the staff concerning diabetes management and enhancing the ways and means of educating and encouraging the patients (Pourhabibi et al., 2022). Averting these benchmarks is vital for the continued concern of the organization’s mission, proper utilization of available resources, and thoroughness of patient care services.
Evaluating Benchmark Underperformance
Mercy Medical Center’s most significant issue relates to the decreasing number of HgbA1c tests, an essential marker in diabetes. This metric with the lowest descriptive result, influences the company significantly and across all organizational levels. HgbA1c measurement is recommended to assess long-term glycemic control in the diabetic population and avoid related complications. Therefore, it can be postulated that the generally poor performance in this area suggests that structural problems require intervention to optimize performance and, subsequently, the quality of healthcare delivery. Enhancing this area can greatly enhance the quality of diabetes treatment, avoid complications, and decrease patient satisfaction (Reponen et al., 2021).
Impact on the Community
The underperformance of HgbA1c testing affects a significant portion of the patient population, particularly those with diabetes, who are at risk of severe health complications if their condition is not adequately monitored and managed (Young & Smith, 2022). This shortfall not only compromises individual patient health but also places additional strain on the community healthcare system, as complications from unmanaged diabetes can lead to increased hospital admissions and emergency care needs. Addressing this underperformance is vital for reducing the burden on healthcare resources and improving overall community health.
Opportunity for Improvement
Addressing the HgbA1c testing benchmark presents the best chance to elevate the overall standard of care at Mercy Medical Center. By focusing on this metric, the organization can implement targeted interventions such as enhanced patient education, improved access to testing facilities, and increased follow-up procedures to ensure regular monitoring. This proactive approach will help in the early detection and management of diabetes-related complications, thus enhancing patient health and lowering long-term healthcare expenses (Reponen et al., 2021). By prioritizing this benchmark, Mercy Medical Center can significantly enhance its performance, fulfill its mission of providing high-quality care, and better serve its community.
Advocacy for Ethical and Sustainable Actions
For enhancing HgbA1c testing, the stakeholder may embrace healthcare professionals, hospital managers, patients’ associations, and community representatives (Willmington et al., 2022). Hence, providers can ensure that those they are attending undergo testing on time, administrators can ensure that they allocate necessary resources for testing and training, advocacy groups can educate people and encourage them to observe the recommended testing schedules, and community leaders can also pass the information on time and encourage people to observe the correct times of testing.
Rationale for Stakeholder Action
The stakeholder group should act because low-performance HgbA1c testing impacts the patient’s health and the effectiveness of diabetes management. Optimizing this index will eliminate such cases, lower hospitalization rates, and improve community health profiles. When combined efforts increase HgbA1c positivity, the general population is healthier, and resources utilized in offering health care are optimally utilized. While each patient has rather limited power to change this or that aspect of the disease or its treatment, the millions of people with diabetes can make significant changes to the existing system collectively (Willmington et al., 2022).
Ethical and Sustainable Actions
Some ethical processes that can be incorporated towards better managing HgbA1c testing include patient-driven health care, fairness, and authenticity. Caregivers can individualize plans according to patients, while managers can see that all the patients should be given the necessary tests (Imai et al., 2021). It is proved that patients and advocacy groups can safeguard their rights and ensure dignified conduct towards patients. However, the efficient utilization of resources also works towards sustainability as the proportion of waste is also lowered. Such endeavors conform with beneficence, justice, and respect for the autonomy of affected patients and contribute to sustainable health reforms regarding diabetes.
NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard and Healthcare Benchmark Evaluation Conclusion
Focusing on the issue of underperformance, Mercy Medical Centre has recorded that the HgbA1c test is right for improving patients’ status, following policy requirements, and offering top-notch care. Positive outcomes are associated with executing specific measures, strengthening available resources, and encouraging cooperation to achieve better results when managing diabetes and preventing its complications. Ethical actions are for sustainable growth and profitability. Thus, enhancing this benchmark is in the individual patient’s and the community’s best interests.
NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard and Healthcare Benchmark Evaluation References
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