Essay NURS FPX 4040 Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators CM

NURS FPX 4040 Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators CM

NURS FPX 4040 Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators CM

NURS FPX 4040 Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators CM

Here at Community hospital we are committed to continually evaluating and improving our patient care, therefore, we are grateful to have the ability to report to the Nebraska Hospital Association (NHA). The Nebraska hospital association, is a state organization that collects and analyses nursing data and collaborates with other agencies to develop effective and efficient processes for hospital nurses to improve patient care. The purpose of the NHA is to help Nebraska hospitals achieve their goals of becoming the leaders in quality of care and safety of their patients. According to, Nebraskahospitals.org, 61 Nebraska hospitals have signed a commitment letter to be the leader in health care best practices and achieve quality and safety of every patient. 

NURS FPX 4040 Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators CM

NHA sends us quality surveys every year to help gather the data they need, once the information is gathered they provide us with facility specific reports with statistics and data that we then are able to use to implement processes to improve quality of care, patient safety, and staff performances. 

For example, once human resources receives these reports they can see how we are doing on staff retention or patient satisfaction as well as many other areas. Human resources will then disperse the reports to the appropriate departments so they can begin the process of developing a plan to improve the patient care quality and safety. This data comes from nurses like you that are out there doing the work. With this information we are able to retain good nurses and ensure our nurses are able to provide quality care to their patients. With having implemented new processes our patient satisfaction score have gone up in outpatient infusion, inpatient services, emergency department and as well as many others.

Another example is 30 day readmission rates. Hospitals are penalized for readmissions that happen within 30 days of discharge. According to cms.gov, hospitals lose a portion of their reimbursement dollars when a patient is readmitted to an acute hospital within 30 days which can be very costly in the long run. Also readmissions can negatively affect the quality of care as well as the patient satisfaction scores.

Our nurses, through their own research and data have identified a few causes of readmissions. Our nurses have recognized that they are the first line of defense for the safety of our patients. Our initiative looks into all causes. I would strongly encourage each of you to do your research and keep in mind that YOU are the leaders in quality care and patient safety. We depend on you to educate our patients and empower them to be able to live longer healthier lives at home. We depend on YOU, because are very powerful in not only researching and identifying way in which we can help reduce readmissions but also in providing timely reporting data to enable us as a health care team to improve care and safety of our patients.

NURS FPX 4040 Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators CM

Our nurses are responsible for collecting and reporting data for the NHA. You play an essential role in our interdisciplinary team, the data you collect will contribute to the improvement of patient safety and the overall patient experience. Here at community hospital all members of the interdisciplinary team will receive the surveys, the data is easy to read and easy to enter into the survey. We have a quality team that is responsible for supplying the data related to readmission rates as well as length of stay, incident reports, number of catheters and infections and much more.  

Your job as a nurse at community hospital is to provide quality of care based on best practice, complete all documentation, provide patient education, identify further education that is needed and notify the patient educator with concerns. Just imagine for a moment, what a great impact you could have on your patients, if the work you do and the data you collect could reduce readmissions and help your patients live longer, healthier and at home. 

The data you submit for the surveys will provide insight into the care you give your patients and into the interventions you provide them with, which will greatly influence patient outcomes. At community hospital we have a quality improvement team that analyzes the data that you have provided in the surveys, this data and the reports will help guide this team in creating and implementing improvement plans that will improve patient outcomes and safety. This team will share updated information to the NHA and what we plan to do with the data.

The data you provide helps us to identify nurse sensitive quality indicators to improve our patient care and safety. Your involvement through accurate charting and the completion of the surveys will impact nursing in ways we can only imagine. Our nursing leaders will use the data to identify an implement best practice outcomes for our patients and staff.

The CMS Value Based Purchasing Program provides acute care facilities incentive money, so, when our facility gets higher performance quality measures and we make improvements in our quality and safety of care we see a greater reimbursement, and that is because of YOU! Our facility could potentially double its financial benefits and improve our patient care outcomes and safety all because of the data and the care that you provide.

NURS FPX 4040 Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators CM

So all in all, our involvement with the NHA gives us a great opportunity to positively impact nursing in general as well as improve patient care and safety across the state. Your responsibility here is to ensure you provide complete and accurate documentation and complete the surveys in a timely manner. Our responsibility as the nurse managers is to provide additional information to the NHA and to support you in all you do. We will also focus on quality improvement and share data with you as we receive it. We all play a role in improving the quality of our patient care and safety. You are one of the most important members of our team, and we value you!

Thank you 

References

https://cms.gov

https://nha.orgUpadhyay, S., Stevenson, A., &  Smith, D., ( 2019). Readmission rates and their impact on hospital financial performance. https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov