MSN-FP6610 Comprehensive needs assessment

Sample Answer for MSN FP6610 Comprehensive needs assessment

Comprehensive Needs Assessment  

The Influence of Healthcare Policy on Evidence-Based Practice 

Health legislation, policy, and research affect clinical practices in a manner that requires clinical practitioners to restructure how they work schedules and strategies to meet the thresholds of evidence-based practices. Evidence-based practice is an important national and global agenda for health policy and research. The United States has formulated various policies in the health system to regulate health practices. These policies have introduced both positive and negative effects in the health systems and, most especially, the affordable evidence-based practices. The current Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in the United States’ health care policy system was introduced with the purpose of cutting costs, increasing the number of insured patients, health equality and enhance the quality of hospital care for all patients (Huntington et al., 2011). 

However, the policy is already causing gaps in the healthcare system. There is a looming shortfall of health professionals in the next decade. The PPACA is resulting in poor health quality because of the burden and pressure on the fewer health practitioners in the public health sector. The shortage of public health workers, increased waiting time, limited time with caregivers, shortened time with providers and patient dissatisfaction are important aspects of quality care affected by the health policy (Huntington et al., 2011). Evidence-based practice is centered on quality mechanisms, and this means that if structures out in place do not provide room for accuracy, then the results remain questionable.  

More information about implications of healthcare policies on evidence-based practices can be gathered from nurses and private medical practitioners who were affected by the introduction of policies such as the ACA. This is because the policies affecting evidence-based practices tend to affect the healthcare workers more than they affect the patients. The compulsory health insurance scheme in for all Americans tended to affect insurance companies and patients who entrusted their insurance health providers than any other insurer. Information from such source can have more weight than the one gotten from patients.  

Factors affecting Patients’ Outcomes related to Care Coordination 

Care coordination is the act of deliberate organization of patient care activities and programs between two or more healthcare participants concerned in patients’ care to facilitate the proper delivery of health care services (Hillis et al., 2016). This involves organization of activities by looking beyond and identifying the aspects that require improvement or increased satisfaction. Factors most likely to affect patients’ outcomes include population health and interpersonal communication. The population of patients’ needs to be placed at the center of care coordination. The healthcare organizations are supposed to assess and understand the population they are serving fully. The assessment of the population should happen before strategies and plans meant for the improvement of health care. Population planning means assessing the community and identify its healthcare needs and then setting the goals. 

    In terms of interpersonal communication, care coordination is important in the current health system that is complex for patients. The healthcare system that is not interoperable can cause setbacks for patient services and delay or fail the purpose of evidence-based practice in the hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Proper communication and coordination in the interoperable system can monitor activities of other practitioners within a facility and know who is involved in the care of a single patient (Hillis et al., 2016). This means that communication as a factor affecting care coordination results to transparency and accountability.  

    A care coordination plan results in various benefits to both the patient and the healthcare givers. Care coordination ensures the accuracy of procedures, efficiency of implementation of health tasks and accountability of activities. The benefits further cut health costs to the patients that may arise as a result of readmissions and medical errors. Hospital facilities and resources can be properly utilized if coordination is taken care of in the facility.  

Care Coordination Performance Measures based on Accreditation Standards 

Performance measures refers to a change in the health of a person, a group of people, an organization or a population that is associated with a health intervention or a series of health interventions. Performance measures are usually driven by national standards, international standards, and financial incentives. The following are some of the specific outcome measures for patient care coordination: (Tzelepis et al., 2015). 

Mortality rates: When mortality rates as pertain to a particular illness reduce by a certain percentage, then there is an indication of improvement in care coordination activities.  

Readmissions: Readmissions after hospitalization may indicate that the initial care did not achieve the healing levels. When the rates of readmissions increase, then the performance measures prove to be below the standards of the expected healthcare facility performance.  

Safety of care: The safety of care while a patient is in a healthcare facility can be determined by issues such as Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI). Whenever this happens, it may indicate that the degree of care coordination at the facility did not meet the accreditation levels.  

Patient’s experience: Assessment of the perception a patient has regarding the quality of care at the facility may determine the degree of care coordination being practiced at the facility. This can serve as the best performance measure since patients have visited different health care facilities and have the ability to compare the current from previous health care services. 

Evidence-Based Practiced for Implementation of a Plan of Care 

Infection Control 

No patient would want to hear that they went for treatment at a facility and acquired another health condition. Nurses have a key role to prevent another infection while a patient is undergoing treatment. Since hospital-acquired infections may indicate an outbreak of a particular disease in the population, this element of evidence-based practice can be used to structure a health care plan. This is because detection of an infection should immediately trigger an investigation and research into the occurrence to assess a possible outbreak in the population (Seddon et al., 2015). The issues concerning health hygiene become crucial since infection control calls for adherence to infection control policies of hospitals which include keeping the hospital environment clean, wearing protective attires and proper hand washing.  

Gathering and Presenting Data to Staff and Physicians 

Data concerning blood pressure results, Oxygen use by patients and the overall data pertaining a particular infection should be organized and presented to the physician and other authorized hospital officials. This kind of data indicates evidential practice and coordination within the organization and gives a trend of activities and the type of patients visiting health facilities in the population. This information helps in structuring health plans because it gives the facility and insight into areas requiring much input concerning certain illnesses (Seddon et al., 2015). The facility can design plans for improvement through facilitating health faculties that receive many patients by the allocation of enough resources. Also, the health planning can balance its expenditure by reducing expenditure on illnesses that do not affect many people in the population. 

References 

Hillis, R., Brenner, M., Larkin, P. J., Cawley, D., & Connolly, M. (2016). The role of care  

coordinator for children with complex care needs: A systematic review. International Journal of Integrated Care, 16(2), 1–18. 

Huntington, W. V., Covington, L. A., Center, P. P., Covington, L. A., & Manchikanti, L. (2011).  

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010: reforming the health care reform for the new decade. Pain physician, 14(1), E35-E67. 

Seddon, D., Krayer, A., Robinson, C., Woods, B., & Tommis, Y. (2013). Care coordination:  

Translating policy into practice for older people. Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, 14(2), 81–92. 

Tzelepis, F., Sanson-Fisher, R. W., Zucca, A. C., & Fradgley, E. A. (2015). Measuring the  

quality of patient-centered care: Why patient-reported measures are critical to reliable assessment. Patient Preference and Adherence, 9, 831–835.