attachment_1Evaluation of the Dashboard and the Healthcare
Samantha Mills
Capella University
NHS-FP5004
04/23/2019
Evaluation of the Dashboard and the Healthcare
There is an excellent essence for healthcare organizations to come up with benchmarking means as this would effectively improve their services (Blouin, 2017). The primary role of the benchmarks is that they provide visual interpretations and plans on how the organizations would improve their services and facilities. Through benchmarking, the organizations are provided with a platform for analyzing their internal data, local, international, while at the same time comparing them with other facilities (Exchange, 2018). At the end of the process, the facility would have gained much in terms of what they are supposed to improve. Benchmarking is a process that involves measuring the internal process of an organization, then identifying, analysing, understanding, and adapting to the outstanding practices as carried out by the other organizations.
A performance dashboard is described as a layered system of data delivery system, which is presented in a single screen, while at the same time providing the most critical information. Through the performance dashboard, the organizations can formulate strategic objectives about their facilities (Blouin, 2017). With this, the managers can quickly identify, measure, monitor, and then manage their performance more effectively. The end product of this is that there would be an effective system of management that has accumulated knowledge from different aspects, hence incorporating them into their system.
There are professional places that have been explicitly used benchmarking metrics for other healthcare facilities. An excellent example of this is Mercy Medical Center. It critically provides high standards of medical benchmarks, whose purpose is to evaluate the errors, the demographics, readmission, and patient safety (Exchange, 2018). By getting this knowledge as instructed at Mercy Medical Center, it would be able to come up with an even more enhanced organization than before. The benchmarks are equally to be compared at both the national levels and the local levels. It should be noted that for healthcare organizations to enhance efficiency in service delivery, they should strive to ensure that they compete both locally and nationally. It is impossible for an organization to enhance efficiency if they keep their levels down at the local levels alone (Blouin, 2017). This paper analyses the benchmarks metrics of the CEO dashboards at the Mercy Medical Center. The evaluation also includes the challenges involved in the same and the underperformance that has been witnessed over a long period. Above all, the report tries to highlight strategies on how such issues could be addressed adequately.
Benchmarks as Structured by the Local, State, or the Federal Healthcare Policies
The Joint Commission stipulates that the primary roles of the dashboards are to focus more on the quality and safety, while at the same time documenting the risk management trends, and the severe safety events within the facility (Exchange, 2018). The risk management trends and patterns should be given among the priorities, given that most of the work within the facility touches on the safety of the patients. The safety of the patients should always come as the first one before anything else. Other factors that the dashboard should address include the staffing issue and critically, the quality of services offered by the organization (Health, 2018).
At Mercy Medical Center, the organization has come up with meaningful metrics that ensure the organization has met all the highlighted factors, from patient’s safety to the quality of healthcare that is provided. According to Mercy Medical Center, quality is the most critical thing when it comes to patient care. If a facility were not able to take care of the quality that they offer, at the end of it, they would have failed the patients as far as matters of healthcare are concerned. In this regard, Mercy Medical Center saw the need to develop a benchmark that critically illustrated to show both the local and national readmission rates for COPD, heart failure, and pneumonia (Ghazisaeidi & Safdari et al., 2015).
The organization also saw the need to come up with several medication errors, failures, patient injuries, pressure scores, and the documentation of errors in different departments of the hospital. It is arguably correct that with this in place, it becomes elementary to deal with the mistakes and rectify them. According to the Local Public Health Act of Minnesota, the local government and the state should have a shared responsibility when to come to healthcare. Both of them should come up with better ways that would enhance service delivery at the healthcare centers. With that in place, they would have developed better means of providing even better services to their patients. The local government and the state are both responsible for; coming up with accountability schemes for the funding of initiatives, developing and initiating guidelines that would aid in assessing and planning of appropriate healthcare within the state (Dreachslin, Weech-Maldonado & Epané et al., 2017). They should also come up with means that would develop documented progress towards the achievement of statewide objectives and goals. After all, these are done, the two should come up with an assigned oversight body to commission the healthcare system within the state or the entire country.
Benchmarking Challenges
In any given organization metrics, it is expected that several challenges may occur. The three primary problems that are expected within the setting of an organization include age diversity, cultural diversity, and proper documentation (Exchange, 2018). Although such challenges could be solved easily with the best measures being put in place, the first step should always be its identification. Once the problems have been identified within the setting of a healthcare facility, there should be a means to ensure that everything goes in the right direction.
The demographics of the county where the medical center is situated contributes highly to the challenges that the healthcare facility faces (Dreachslin, Weech-Maldonado & Epané et al., 2017). Located in Scott County Minnesota, Mercy Medical Center has consequently been facing several challenges which in one way or the other they try to address. As of 2018, the county had a population of 159,678, out of the total population of the state which is 5,457,173 (Rutherford & Provost et al., 2017). It should be noted that this is one of the counties in the United States where racial diversity is not much felt.
The entire population is made up of 82.9% of non-Hispanic white people. Additionally, 285 of the whole community are below the age of 18 (Dreachslin, Weech-Maldonado & Epané et al., 2017). The demographics of the county, which includes the size and the total population have in one way, or the other contributed to the challenges faced by the county facility. Staffing is also another issue that should be observed keenly by both the state and local government. NHSFP5004 Capella Evaluation of Dashboards Healthcare Policy Proposal Paper
Benchmarking and Underperformance
Within the documentation, it is apparent that the facility has great potential to be improved. As per the documentation made, specific significant changes were made to enhance the number of errors that had occurred previously (Exchange, 2018). To rectify or adjust the kind of failures experienced earlier on, it was necessary that individuals try to analyse and look for a way to make changes. However, within the departments of Bariatric and Orthopedic services, the number of failures significantly increased between 2016 and 2017 (Dreachslin, Weech-Maldonado & Epané et al., 2017). However, the underperformance can be solved if the management came up with standard measures that seek to upgrade the facility. To achieve a hospital-wide patient flow, there should be an ultimate improvement in the patient care experience at the hospital. This requires the hospital’s appreciation as an interdependent and interconnected system of care.
Ethical Actions for Improvement of the Benchmark Underperformance
To improve the cultural and age diversity, some of the most critical factors required includes improving the underperformance. As highlighted, the diversity of the county is a primary factor that contributes to the challenges that face the healthcare facility. It means that to solve such issues, the management should look at the solution from the scope of the diversity of the county. Items such as staffing are to be addressed to come up with amicable solutions over the same. Equally, there should be action plan implemented that would ensure more diversity has been improved to the best levels, while at the same time enhancing cultural competence within the setting of the organization (Blouin, 2017). Additionally, expanding the market and the outreach of the community would be a great way of dealing with the challenge of age diversity and cultural underperformance within the setting of the organization.
Conclusion
The benchmarks evaluations at Mercy Medical Center have not only been effective but efficient in ensuring that the standards of the health organization have been improved. By following most of the recommendations provided by the benchmark, it would be easier to come up with an effective plan over the same. Although the medical center has been performing well according to the parameter, certain things need to be effected to make it even more efficient. By eliminating the errors and failures as addressed by the benchmark, the hospital would have developed much capacity as far as the performance is concerned.
References
Blouin, A. S. (2017). High-Reliability Healthcare. Retrieved from The Joint Commission: https://www.jointcommission.org/leadership_blog/how_engaged_is_your_board/
Dreachslin, J., Weech-Maldonado, R., Jordan, L., Gail, J., & Epané, J. P. (2017). Blueprint for Sustainable Change in Diversity Management and Cultural Competence: Lessons From the National Center for Healthcare Leadership Diversity Demonstration Project. Journal of Healthcare Management, 171-185.
Exchange., T. B. (2018). What is benchmarking? Retrieved from The Benchmarking Exchange: http://www.benchnet.com/wib.htm
Ghazisaeidi, M., Safdari, R., Torabi, M., Mirzaee, M., Farzi, J., & Goodini, A. (2015). Development of Performance Dashboards in the Healthcare Sector: Key Practical Issues. Acta Informatica Medica, 317-321.
Health, M. D. (2018). Local Public Health Act. Retrieved from Minnesota Department of Health: http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/opi/gov/lphact/
Rutherford, P., Provost, L., Kotagal, U., Luther, K., & Anderson, A. (2017). Achieving Hospital-wide Patient Flow. Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Retrieved from http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/IHIWhitePapers/Achieving-Hospital-wide-Patient-Flow.aspx
