NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation

Capella University NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation– Step-By-Step Guide

This guide will demonstrate how to complete the Capella University  NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation assignment based on general principles of academic writing. Here, we will show you the A, B, Cs of completing an academic paper, irrespective of the instructions. After guiding you through what to do, the guide will leave one or two sample essays at the end to highlight the various sections discussed below.

How to Research and Prepare for NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation

Whether one passes or fails an academic assignment such as the Capella University  NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  depends on the preparation done beforehand. The first thing to do once you receive an assignment is to quickly skim through the requirements. Once that is done, start going through the instructions one by one to clearly understand what the instructor wants. The most important thing here is to understand the required format—whether it is APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.

After understanding the requirements of the paper, the next phase is to gather relevant materials. The first place to start the research process is the weekly resources. Go through the resources provided in the instructions to determine which ones fit the assignment. After reviewing the provided resources, use the university library to search for additional resources. After gathering sufficient and necessary resources, you are now ready to start drafting your paper.

How to Write the Introduction for  NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation 

The introduction for the Capella University  NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  is where you tell the instructor what your paper will encompass. In three to four statements, highlight the important points that will form the basis of your paper. Here, you can include statistics to show the importance of the topic you will be discussing. At the end of the introduction, write a clear purpose statement outlining what exactly will be contained in the paper. This statement will start with “The purpose of this paper…” and then proceed to outline the various sections of the instructions.

How to Write the Body for  NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation

After the introduction, move into the main part of the  NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  assignment, which is the body. Given that the paper you will be writing is not experimental, the way you organize the headings and subheadings of your paper is critically important. In some cases, you might have to use more subheadings to properly organize the assignment. The organization will depend on the rubric provided. Carefully examine the rubric, as it will contain all the detailed requirements of the assignment. Sometimes, the rubric will have information that the normal instructions lack.

Another important factor to consider at this point is how to do citations. In-text citations are fundamental as they support the arguments and points you make in the paper. At this point, the resources gathered at the beginning will come in handy. Integrating the ideas of the authors with your own will ensure that you produce a comprehensive paper. Also, follow the given citation format. In most cases, APA 7 is the preferred format for nursing assignments.

How to Write the Conclusion for  NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation 

After completing the main sections, write the conclusion of your paper. The conclusion is a summary of the main points you made in your paper. However, you need to rewrite the points and not simply copy and paste them. By restating the points from each subheading, you will provide a nuanced overview of the assignment to the reader.

How to Format the References List for  NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation 

The very last part of your paper involves listing the sources used in your paper. These sources should be listed in alphabetical order and double-spaced. Additionally, use a hanging indent for each source that appears in this list. Lastly, only the sources cited within the body of the paper should appear here.

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Sample Answer for NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation

In everyday health practice, health care practitioners and organizations work to achieve a set target. They commit their energy and resources to meet the desired levels of care quality and patient safety as legally, ethically and professionally required. To achieve the desired outcomes, health care providers are guided by performance benchmarks. From a health care perspective, dashboards serve as the most reliable analytic tools for monitoring key performance indicators. They contain metrics that enable health care providers to access crucial patient statistics and intervene approximately as areas of underperformance obligate. Based on the dashboard data for substance use disorder (SUD) at an emergency room (ER), this paper explains the implications of underperformance in key areas and the role of stakeholders in performance improvement.

Dashboard Metrics for CareM Medical Center (ER): Last quarter 2019

Hospital overview: CareM Medical Center is located in Bakersfield, California. Operating majorly in an under-resourced setting, the facility targets low-income earners. For a while, substance use disorder (SUD) has been a key focus area in the center’s emergency room. The data indicates areas of underperformance, implying that interventions are necessary to change the described state.

Evaluation: Metrics not Meeting Organizational Benchmark

Health care organizations must meet benchmarks set by local, state, or federal health care laws or policies. The targets indicated on the dashboard are quality performance standards that CareM Medical Center should strive to meet consistently. Based on this data, the metrics not meeting the benchmark include SUD screening, waiting hour average, number of beds, and nurse to patient ratio. It is a genuine concern considering the areas affected critically affect patient outcomes.

Health Care Policies Establishing the Benchmarks

Located in Bakersfield, CareM Medical Center is primarily regulated by California laws. The number of patients served daily, referrals, and emergency care should follow California health law. It is also crucial to consider what federal policies recommend about the stated benchmark metrics. The average waiting time in an emergency room (ER) is forty minutes. The other area governed by law is the nurse to patient ratio in the ER. California recommends a ratio of 1:4 (Dembosky, 2020). The number of beds should be adequate to prevent overcrowding. From this evaluation, attention should shift to practices that can reduce waiting time in the ER. However, the evaluation could have been better if there was data to compare progress over time. For instance, data in the other three quarters in 2019 can help examine the progress to ascertain whether attention should be on reducing waiting time to meet the federal recommendations or other areas.

Challenges Associated with Meeting Prescribed Benchmarks

Meeting the prescribed benchmarks is always challenging from an organizational perspective. To ensure that patients are adequately served, health care providers and medical equipment must be sufficient. Interprofessional collaboration should be high enabled by modern health technologies, among other means. To achieve this, health care organizations must look for the necessary resources to address current and emerging needs. They are forced to search for operational and capital funding and invest resources to get the required financial resources. Support services must be plenty too. Since health care organizations are not investment-oriented, the inadequacy of resources usually hinders them from serving patients and the community as their strategic missions envisage.

Financial and operational challenges are central to the underperformance seen in staffing. For health care organizations to have the required number of health care providers, adequate financial resources are vital. Processes such as recruitment, motivation, and performance appraisal depend on financial resources. Salaries for the extra workforce and facilities such as accommodation are money-based. Accordingly, the nurse: patient ratio will depend on the organization’s resources to a considerable extent. Based on CareM’s setting, the nurse-patient ratio of 1:5 is sensible, albeit the need for improvement.

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NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 4 Training Session for Policy Implementation

Benchmark with Great Impacts on Overall Performance

From the highlighted underperformance areas, the nurse: patient ratio in the ER can significantly improve overall performance. Nurse: patient ratio affects nurses’ productivity since it can deter their motivation and ability to work due to heavy workload if the ratio is too high (Gutsan et al., 2018). Overworking as nurses try to achieve the set benchmarks leads to nurse burnout. The nurse: patient ratio in the ER determines how nurses approach routine care without making medication errors. Handling a manageable number of patients allows nurses to work on patients quickly and avoid overcrowding in emergency rooms (Hawk & D’Onofrio, 2018). If not overwhelmed, nurses would also be better positioned to liaise with outside physicians to determine whether patients require emergency visits accurately.

Benchmark of Interest: Average Waiting Hour

Together with the number of beds, the average waiting hour is the benchmark I chose for improvement. In the medical center, the average waiting time is eighty minutes, double the allowable average of forty minutes. A review of the causes of high waiting time in emergency rooms revealed that beds’ inadequacy is a leading cause. The other reason is that medical facilities do not give outside physicians the privilege to admit patients, making ER visits higher than usual. Unless the issue of referrals is addressed, the situation is unlikely to change soonest to improve health outcomes.

Regarding the benchmark underperformance that is most widespread throughout the organization, the inadequate number of beds deserves a lot of attention. It is more of an administrative problem than a policy issue. A low number of beds implies that SUD patients cannot be released for admission and pave the way to screen other patients since they must stay in beds. Accordingly, this problem becomes the most impacting on patients and staff. To patients, the waiting time increases, risking their health further. It can be a source of demotivation to serve for nurses since the number waiting to be served is proportional to the waiting time.

Impacts of Underperformance on the Community

Ethically and professionally, health care organizations are mandated to provide excellent quality care and prioritize patient safety. High waiting time is a disservice to the community served and violates the principle of health care equity. According to Reese (2019), high waiting time in emergency rooms affects the health of millions of Americans yearly, and many usually leave health care facilities without attendance or partially attended.  This disservice is also a leading cause of more extended hospital stays since the chances of health complications as patients wait to be served are high. High waiting time increases medical errors and patients’ death rates (Martinez et al., 2019). As a result, the community health is affected adversely, and attention to enhance performance is necessary.

Opportunity to Improve the Overall Quality of Care

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

Hawk, K., & D’Onofrio, G. (2018). Emergency department screening and interventions for substance use disorders. Addiction science & clinical practice, 13(1), 1-6. https://ascpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13722-018-0117-1

Martinez, D. A., Zhang, H., Bastias, M., Feijoo, F., Hinson, J., Martinez, R., … & Prieto, D. (2019). Prolonged wait time is associated with increased mortality for Chilean waiting list patients with non-prioritized conditions. BMC public health, 19(1), 1-11. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-6526-6

Reese, P. (2019, May 17). As ER wait times grow, more patients leave against medical advice. KHN. https://khn.org/news/as-er-wait-times-grow-more-patients-leave-against-medical-advice/

Sample Answer 2 for NURS FPX 6004 Assessment 4 Training Session for Policy Implementation

A dashboard refers to a display tool used to alert, monitor trends, plan, and compare key performance indicators, mostly observed in a professional simplified user interface.  It employs data visualization approaches to support health providers, and facility managers visualize and explore health data on processes and outcomes (Randell et al., 2020). This paper seeks to discuss the evaluation of the current organizational performance with regard to prescribed benchmarks laid down by government laws and policies at the federal level. I will also advocate for an ethical action to solve benchmark underperformance in the organization and a potential solution for enhancing the quality of care and performance.

Dashboard Metrics Associated with Benchmarks Set Forth by Federal Health Care Laws or Policies

A dashboard metric in healthcare refers to a distinct performance measurement applied to monitor, analyze and optimize all pertinent healthcare processes to improve patient satisfaction. Dashboard metrics connected with benchmarks set by federal healthcare laws include the Average Hospital Stay, which evaluates the duration patients are spending in the inpatient, and the Treatment Costs metric, which estimates how much a patient costs to the hospital (AHRQ, 2020). Additionally, the Hospital Readmission Rates metric monitors the number of patients returning. The Patient Wait Time metric tracks waiting times to enhance patient satisfaction, and the Patient Satisfaction metric examines patient satisfaction in detail. Furthermore, the metric on Staff-to-Patient Ratio makes sure that a facility has adequate staff to attend to patients, whereas the Canceled/missed appointments metric monitors patients’ appointments (AHRQ, 2020). Patient Safety metric prevents incidents in the hospital while ER Wait Time tracks rush hours in a hospital’s emergency room. Lastly, the Costs by Payer metric identifies the health insurance type of patients.

The metrics are established by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) through the Network of Patient Safety Databases (NPSD). NPSD was created to present an interactive, evidence-based management resource for health providers, Patient Safety Organizations, and others (AHRQ, 2020). The NPSD is implemented by the AHRQ, the lead agency for patient safety.

Shortfalls identified in our organizational performance with respect to the dashboard metrics include treatment costs, wherein patient’s inpatient and outpatient costs have been increasingly on the high end for the past three years. Patients with chronic illnesses have the highest treatment costs. There is also a shortfall in the hospital readmission rates, with about 18% of patients being readmitted within six months. Patients with high readmission rates include those aged 65 and older with chronic conditions such as cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. Furthermore, the metric on staff-to-patient ratio was not met primarily on the nurse-to-patient ratio, with most of the nursing units not meeting the recommended ratio.

Gaps were identified in the organization’s information on patient satisfaction, canceled/missed appointments, and ER wait times. The organization has not been keen on evaluating patients’ satisfaction with care which affected the evaluation process. Besides, missed appointments are not recorded, and the ER wait times have not been assessed. Availability of information on the three metrics could have significantly improved my evaluation of dashboard metrics.  

Challenges That Meeting Prescribed Benchmarks Can Pose for a Health Care Organization

Healthcare organizations experience increasing challenges in providing high-quality services at reasonable costs. One major challenge encountered by organizations includes a lack of information technology (IT) resources. IT resources are required to identify data sources and processes to employ in data generation, crucial in dashboard development (Karami et al., 2017).  IT resources are a challenge because data is often stored in many incompatible source systems such as information, accounting, and human resource systems (Karami et al., 2017). Consequently, a health organization must resolve incompatibilities in the meaning and definition of data elements to facilitate consistent reporting.

Another challenge for health organizations is a lack of a suitable and well-organized IT infrastructure founded on performance measurement principles. A lack of a proper IT infrastructure makes it challenging for hospital managers to assess, track, and manage performance effectively since the performance dashboard displays crucial information about attaining strategic objectives (Randell et al., 2020). Consequently, hospital managers encounter challenges in recognizing problem areas requiring corrective interventions, evaluating the basis of poor performance, predicting trends, and establishing benchmarks.

The challenge in data sources can result in poor data quality due to huge amounts of irrelevant data and unreliability. As a result, a healthcare organization may not use the dashboards to the maximum level and produce unreliable results. Besides, the challenge on IT infrastructure can result in an organization designing inefficient dashboards, thus not meeting prescribed benchmarks (Randell et al., 2020). I assume that a healthcare organization must invest in healthcare technology to meet its prescribed benchmarks. The lack of a strong IT foundation is likely to result in inconsistent, time-consuming, incomparable, and static performance reports that do not transparently replicate the real picture of an organization’s performance.

A Benchmark Underperformance in a Health Care Organization That Has the Potential for Greatly Improving Overall Quality or Performance

            Benchmarking involves comparing and measuring an organization’s services versus other national organizations. An example of a benchmark underperformance in our organization with the potential for significantly improving overall quality and performance is improving patient safety. Patient safety affects the greatest number of patients since reduced safety results in increased hospital stays, complications, comorbidities, readmission rates, and increased healthcare costs (Weggelaar-Jansen et al., 2018). Additionally, reduced safety affects the greatest number of staff due to a high workload which causes burnout and poor health outcomes.

If a healthcare organization focused on improving patient safety, it would significantly reduce staff workload, and reduce patient and operational costs. Tracking this benchmark can help an organization identify which part of the care process the safety incidents occur and adjust its standards appropriately (Weggelaar-Jansen et al., 2018). Furthermore, improving patient safety can help reduce the incidents that compromise patient safety, such as medical errors, patient falls, and hospital-acquired infections. Improving patient safety can help meet metrics such as reduced hospital stays, readmission rates, and ultimately reduced hospital costs (Weggelaar-Jansen et al., 2018). Besides, it can improve overall health outcomes and patient satisfaction, thus increasing profits for the organization

Ethical Action to Address a Benchmark Underperformance

My recommended action to improve patient safety in the organization will be directed to the hospital’s management to improve working conditions by increasing nurse-to-patient ratios. Nursing ratios can be increased by hiring more nurses and motivating staff to reduce high turnover that further worsens the understaffing situation (Bridges et al., 2019). Increasing nursing ratios will significantly reduce burnout and eventually lower turnover rates, which are the major cause of understaffing. When staffing nurses in various units, the nursing manager should consider factors, such as patient acuity, admission numbers, staff skill-mix and expertise, discharges, transfers, physical layout of the unit, and available technology (Bridges et al., 2019). Considering these factors will ensure that a unit is staffed based on the patient care workload and fair staffing.

The management should increase nursing staffing because nurses play a vital role in promoting patient safety while providing direct patient care.  Nurses assess patients for deterioration in clinical status, track errors and near misses, and perform numerous tasks to make sure that a patient is provided high-quality care (Bridges et al., 2019). Besides, they understand care processes and shortcomings in systems that may compromise patient safety and communicate changes in patients’ health status. Missed nursing care incidents are strongly connected with a high patient workload and cause undesirable consequences for patients and nurses (Bridges et al., 2019). Consequently, increasing nursing ratios can ensure that a nurse is not overwhelmed and lower incidences of medication errors, falls, pressure ulcers, infections, and readmissions.

Increasing nursing ratios is an ethical action since it upholds the principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence since it promotes better health outcomes and prevents harm to the patient.  It also promotes the welfare of nurses since they have reduced burnout levels and promote better physical and mental wellbeing (Bridges et al., 2019). Besides, increased staffing promotes justice because more nurses are available to take care of patients who require their services.

Conclusion

A dashboard contains goals set by users and constantly meets their expectations since the end-user experience is a major feature of dashboard software. Benchmarks laid down by the Federal are set by the U.S HHS under the Network of Patient Safety Databases, which the AHRQ runs.  Shortfalls identified in the evaluation of dashboard metrics include high treatment costs, high readmission rates, and an unhealthy staff-to-patient ratio.  A healthcare organization can face challenges such as a lack of IT resources and unsuitable IT infrastructure when meeting the Prescribed Benchmarks resulting in unreliable results. My proposed solution to address the benchmark underperformance on patient safety is increasing nursing ratios. The action will reduce incidences of missed nursing care, reduce incidences of compromised patient safety, and improve nurses’ wellbeing. 

References

Agency for Health Research and Quality. (2020, August). NPSD Dashboards. https://www.ahrq.gov/npsd/data/dashboard/index.html

Bridges, J., Griffiths, P., Oliver, E., & Pickering, R. M. (2019). Hospital nurse staffing and staff-patient interactions: an observational study. BMJ quality & safety, 28(9), 706-713. https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2018-008948

Karami, M., Langarizadeh, M., & Fatehi, M. (2017). Evaluation of Effective Dashboards: Key Concepts and Criteria. The open medical informatics journal, 11, 52–57. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874431101711010052

Randell, R., Alvarado, N., McVey, L., Ruddle, R. A., Doherty, P., Gale, C., Mamas, M., & Dowding, D. (2020). Requirements for a quality dashboard: Lessons from National Clinical Audits. AMIA … Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium, 2019, 735–744.

Weggelaar-Jansen, A., Broekharst, D., & de Bruijne, M. (2018). Developing a hospital-wide quality and safety dashboard: a qualitative research study. BMJ quality & safety, 27(12), 1000–1007. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2018-007784