Proposal

1

Dashboard Metrics Evaluation

May 23, 2024

Mercy Medical Center’s Dashboard Metrics Evaluation

Healthcare organizations should operate competitively in aspects such as quality care, services, and benchmarking with defined goals and objectives to obtain satisfactory results for both patients and society (Novitasari, 2022). To achieve these objectives, it is crucial for healthcare organizations to emphasize their mission and vision statements in collaboration with stakeholders and the board of directors. This ensures that the primary focus remains on helping people along their path to improved wellness. Benchmarking is vital within healthcare facilities to compare their performance with localized and national standards.

Diabetes Care Benchmarking

Upon comparing Mercy Medical Center's benchmarks in diabetes care to state and national standards, it became evident that while Mercy is close to the benchmarks for eye exams and foot testing, it meets the target for HgbA1c when compared to state benchmarks and is nearly meeting national standards. For patients aged 40 or older with diagnosed diabetes who received an eye exam within the year, Mercy Medical Clinic had a rate of only 59%, which is 14.1% lower than Minnesota's state average of 73.1% and 16.2% below the national benchmark of 75.2% (Mercy Medical Center). Additionally, the clinic underperforms in foot checks for the same patient group, with only 60% of patients receiving exams, falling 22.9% below the state average of 82.9% and 24% below the national average of 84% (Mercy Medical Center).

In assessing the clinic’s HgbA1c benchmarks, Mercy Medical Center is only 1.4% below the Minnesota state target and within 10.5% of the national target. Although Mercy meets 90% of the state's benchmark, it falls 3% short of achieving 90% at the national level (Mercy Medical Center). It is challenging to pinpoint specific barriers to improvement without comprehensive data, but factors such as training, staffing, and diversity representation are likely contributors.

Staffing and Training Needs

Proper staffing with well-trained personnel who can dedicate sufficient time to educate patients about the importance of tests is critical (Kimbell et al., 2020). Understaffing and inadequate training in patient education and test scheduling are major reasons for underperformance in eye and foot testing. Additionally, a lack of diversity among staff may reduce patient trust and compliance.

Building trust and respect with patients is vital for their adherence to prescribed treatments (Peimani et al., 2020). Mercy Medical Center must prioritize improving patient care to avoid severe consequences, including patient distrust, inadequate staffing, and insufficiently trained personnel. Diabetes, characterized by high blood glucose due to insulin deficiencies, can lead to severe complications such as heart disease, stroke, blindness, and kidney disease if not controlled. Diabetes affects approximately 37.3 million people in the United States, with an additional 122.4 million individuals being pre-diabetic (Levy, 2021).

Recommendation

Since Mercy Medical Center is underperforming on diabetes care benchmarks, the hospital should promote ethical and sustainable strategies involving its main stakeholders, including the board of directors and community members. Specifically, the proposal is to invest in increasing the number of staff, improving their training, and purchasing more testing equipment. This approach aligns with ethical values such as excellence in addressing patient needs and equality in healthcare, as well as sustainable development by enhancing human capital and overall patient well-being.

To retain a competitive quality of patient care and achieve exceptional patient satisfaction, this paper recommends that a collective group of stakeholders, including the board of directors, commit capital funds to advance staffing through comprehensive training and increase the availability of proper testing equipment. Investing in our workforce to ensure thorough training for all employees is crucial to maintaining our high standards of care. Equally important, the purchase of additional testing equipment will enable us to conduct more comprehensive and routine tests, thereby improving diagnostic accuracy and patient outcomes.

Engaging with patients and healthcare practitioners will help foster their support in identifying and addressing areas of underperformance. By focusing on resource allocation and management in these critical areas, we can outperform the industry and maintain our facility as the premier provider of healthcare quality and patient satisfaction. Allocating funds for staffing, training, and equipment investments will yield a good return on investment and is essential to maintaining our competitiveness. Enhancing human resources through adequate education and improving service competencies will increase patient confidence and overall health outcomes.

Ultimately, this strategy will create the right business model and foster business sustainability and growth in the long run. Implementing higher accuracy in benchmarking coupled with higher patient satisfaction will enable the organization to differentiate itself from competitors, thereby reinforcing our brand promise of quality and reliable healthcare solutions. Investments in human resources and better-quality equipment have contributed to our long-term planning and established a strong market position for our healthcare facility. As discussed above, investing in these areas will greatly benefit our patients and improve overall health outcomes across our organization.

However, the ethics of a healthcare organization should primarily focus on patients. A key element of this imperative is the use of benchmarks, which allow us to measure our facility's performance against state and national averages. Without these benchmarks, Mercy Medical Center would struggle to conduct its operations effectively, as laws, regulations, and minimum requirements are clearly defined in the strict operational guidelines we must follow. Comparing our practices with these benchmarks ensures that we do not provide unsatisfactory or even dangerous health services to our patients.

Conclusion

Tools for evaluating the efficiency of different spheres of activity are crucial. In our case, the clinic must recruit enough competent human resources who have the time to sit down with patients and explain the relevance of specific tests and how they help monitor the patient’s reaction to diabetes. If the clinic is understaffed or if current employees lack the ability to educate patients and schedule tests, poor results will be observed in comparison indicators such as eye and foot tests. Training and appropriately staffing our team, while increasing our testing capacity, will significantly improve our benchmarks. This will not only enhance quality but also ensure that Mercy Medical Center can compete and remain compliant with state and national regulatory requirements.

By training our team members for their specific positions and recruiting the right human resources to fill available roles, coupled with increased testing capacities, we will tremendously enhance our benchmarks. This will improve the quality of services and ensure that Mercy Medical Center meets state and national accreditation requirements. Investing in these areas is not just about meeting standards but also bringing about substantial improvements in patient outcomes. This will be appreciated and supported by the community we serve. It is a strategic investment in the facility's human and technical resources, aimed at achieving our ultimate goal of delivering outstanding patient care and fostering healthier communities.

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( 2 )

References

Kimbell, B., Rankin, D., Ashcroft, N. L., Varghese, L., Allen, J. M., Boughton, C. K., ... & CLOuD Consortium. (2020). What training, support, and resourcing do health professionals need to support people using a closed-loop system? A qualitative interview study with health professionals involved in the closed loop from onset in type 1 diabetes (CLOuD) trial. Diabetes technology & therapeutics, 22(6), 468-475.retrieved from: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/dia.2019.0466

LEVY, L. A. (2021). The exploding incidence and prevalence of diabetes. The Diabetic Foot. Retrieved from: https://podiatrym.com/pdf/2021/4/Levy421Web.pdf

Mercy Medical Center (Shakopee, MN)

Novitasari, D. (2022). Hospital Quality Service and Patient Satisfaction: How The Role of

Service Excellent and Service Quality?. Journal of Information Systems and Management

(JISMA), 1(1), 29-36. Retrieved from: https://jisma.org/index.php/jisma/article/view/255

Peimani, M., Nasli-Esfahani, E., & Sadeghi, R. (2020). Patients’ perceptions of patient–provider communication and diabetes care: A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies. Chronic illness, 16(1), 3-22.retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1742395318782378

Pourkazemi, A., Ghanbari, A., Khojamli, M., Balo, H., Hemmati, H., Jafaryparvar, Z., & Motamed, B. (2020). Diabetic foot care: knowledge and practice. BMC endocrine disorders, 20, 1-8. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12902-020-0512-y

Policy Proposal

Write a 3-5 page policy proposal and practice guidelines for improving quality and performance associated with the benchmark metric underperformance you advocated for improving in Assessment 1.

Introduction

In advocating for institutional policy changes related to local, state, or federal health care laws or policies, health leaders must be able to develop and present clear and well-written policy and practice guideline proposals that will enable a team, a unit, or an organization as a whole to resolve relevant performance issues and bring about improvements in the quality and safety of health care. This assessment offers you an opportunity to take the lead in proposing such changes.

As a master's-level health care practitioner, you have a valuable viewpoint and voice on policy development, both inside and outside your care setting. Developing policy for internal purposes can be a valuable process toward quality and safety improvement, as well as ensuring compliance with various health care regulatory pressures. This assessment offers you an opportunity to take the lead in proposing such changes.

Instructions

Propose an organizational policy and practice guidelines that you believe will lead to an improvement in quality and performance associated with the benchmark underperformance you advocated for improving in Assessment 1. Be precise, professional, and persuasive in demonstrating the merit of your proposed actions.

Requirements

The policy proposal requirements outlined below correspond to the scoring guide criteria, so be sure to address each main point. Read the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed. In addition, be sure to note the requirements for document format and length and for supporting evidence.

· Explain the need for creating a policy and practice guidelines to address a shortfall in meeting a benchmark metric prescribed by local, state, or federal health care policies or laws.

· What is the current benchmark for the organization and the numeric score for the underperformance?

· How is the benchmark underperformance potentially affecting the provision of quality care or the operations of the organization?

· What are the potential repercussions of not making any changes?

· What evidence supports your conclusions?

· Summarize your proposed organizational policy and practice guidelines.

· Identify applicable local, state, or federal health care policy or law that prescribes relevant performance benchmarks that your policy proposal addresses.

· Keep your audience in mind when creating this summary.

· Analyze the potential effects of environmental factors on your recommended practice guidelines.

· What regulatory considerations could affect your recommended guidelines?

· What resources could affect your recommended guidelines (staffing, financial, and logistical considerations, or support services)?

· Explain ethical, evidence-based practice guidelines to improve targeted benchmark performance and the impact the proposed changes will have on the targeted group.

· What does the evidence-based literature suggest are potential strategies to improve performance for your targeted benchmark?

· How would these strategies ensure performance improvement or compliance with applicable local, state, or federal health care policy or law?

· How can you ensure that these strategies are ethical and culturally inclusive in their application?

· What is the direct impact of these changes on the stakeholders’ work setting and job requirements?

· Explain why particular stakeholders and groups must be involved in further development and implementation of your proposed policy and practice guidelines.

· Why is it important to engage these stakeholders and groups?

· How can their participation produce a stronger policy and facilitate its implementation?

· Present strategies for collaborating with the stakeholder group to implement your proposed policy and practice guidelines.

· What role will the stakeholder group play in implementing your proposal?

· Why is the stakeholder group and their collaboration important for successful implementation?

· Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions.

· Proofread your proposal, before you submit it, to minimize errors that could distract readers and make it more difficult for them to focus on the substance of your proposal.

· Use paraphrasing and summarization to represent ideas from external sources.

· Be sure to apply correct APA formatting to source citations and references.

Policy Proposal Format and Length

It may be helpful to use a template or format for your proposal that is used in your current organization. The risk management or quality department could be a good resource for finding an appropriate template or format. If you are not currently in practice, or your organization does not have these resources, many appropriate templates are freely available on the Internet.

Your policy should be succinct (about one paragraph). Overall, your proposal should be 4–6 pages in length.

Supporting Evidence

Cite 3–5 references to relevant research, case studies, or best practices to support your analysis and recommendations.

Portfolio Prompt: You may choose to save your policy proposal to your  ePortfolio.

Competencies Measured

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:

· Competency 1: Analyze relevant health care laws, policies, and regulations; their application; and their effects on organizations, interprofessional teams, and professional practice.

· Explain and interpret for stakeholders the need for creating a policy and practice guidelines to address a shortfall in meeting a benchmark metric prescribed by local, state, or federal health care policies or laws.

· Competency 2: Lead the development and implementation of ethical and culturally sensitive policies that improve health outcomes for individuals, organizations, and populations.

· Summarize a proposed organizational policy or practice change guideline and analyze the potential effects of environmental factors on recommended practice guidelines.

· Competency 3: Evaluate relevant indicators of performance, such as benchmarks, research, and best practices, to inform health care laws and policies for patients, organizations, and populations.

· Explain how ethical, evidence-based practice guidelines to improve targeted benchmark performance will impact a stakeholder group needed for successful implementation of the policy or practice change.

· Competency 4: Develop strategies to work collaboratively with policy makers, stakeholders, and colleagues to address environmental (governmental and regulatory) forces.

· Explain why particular stakeholders and groups must be involved in further development and implementation of a proposed policy or practice change to improve quality and outcomes.

· Present strategies for collaborating with a stakeholder group to implement a proposed policy and practice guidelines.

· Competency 5: Produce clear, coherent, and professional written work, in accordance with Capella's writing standards.

· Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions.

· Support main points, assertions, arguments, conclusions, or recommendations with relevant and credible evidence.

1

Dashboard Metrics Evaluation

May 23, 2024

Mercy Medical Center’s Dashboard Metrics Evaluation

Healthcare organizations should operate competitively in aspects such as quality care, services, and benchmarking with defined goals and objectives to obtain satisfactory results for both patients and society (Novitasari, 2022). To achieve these objectives, it is crucial for healthcare organizations to emphasize their mission and vision statements in collaboration with stakeholders and the board of directors. This ensures that the primary focus remains on helping people along their path to improved wellness. Benchmarking is vital within healthcare facilities to compare their performance with localized and national standards.

Diabetes Care Benchmarking

Upon comparing Mercy Medical Center's benchmarks in diabetes care to state and national standards, it became evident that while Mercy is close to the benchmarks for eye exams and foot testing, it meets the target for HgbA1c when compared to state benchmarks and is nearly meeting national standards. For patients aged 40 or older with diagnosed diabetes who received an eye exam within the year, Mercy Medical Clinic had a rate of only 59%, which is 14.1% lower than Minnesota's state average of 73.1% and 16.2% below the national benchmark of 75.2% (Mercy Medical Center). Additionally, the clinic underperforms in foot checks for the same patient group, with only 60% of patients receiving exams, falling 22.9% below the state average of 82.9% and 24% below the national average of 84% (Mercy Medical Center).

In assessing the clinic’s HgbA1c benchmarks, Mercy Medical Center is only 1.4% below the Minnesota state target and within 10.5% of the national target. Although Mercy meets 90% of the state's benchmark, it falls 3% short of achieving 90% at the national level (Mercy Medical Center). It is challenging to pinpoint specific barriers to improvement without comprehensive data, but factors such as training, staffing, and diversity representation are likely contributors.

Staffing and Training Needs

Proper staffing with well-trained personnel who can dedicate sufficient time to educate patients about the importance of tests is critical (Kimbell et al., 2020). Understaffing and inadequate training in patient education and test scheduling are major reasons for underperformance in eye and foot testing. Additionally, a lack of diversity among staff may reduce patient trust and compliance.

Building trust and respect with patients is vital for their adherence to prescribed treatments (Peimani et al., 2020). Mercy Medical Center must prioritize improving patient care to avoid severe consequences, including patient distrust, inadequate staffing, and insufficiently trained personnel. Diabetes, characterized by high blood glucose due to insulin deficiencies, can lead to severe complications such as heart disease, stroke, blindness, and kidney disease if not controlled. Diabetes affects approximately 37.3 million people in the United States, with an additional 122.4 million individuals being pre-diabetic (Levy, 2021).

Recommendation

Since Mercy Medical Center is underperforming on diabetes care benchmarks, the hospital should promote ethical and sustainable strategies involving its main stakeholders, including the board of directors and community members. Specifically, the proposal is to invest in increasing the number of staff, improving their training, and purchasing more testing equipment. This approach aligns with ethical values such as excellence in addressing patient needs and equality in healthcare, as well as sustainable development by enhancing human capital and overall patient well-being.

To retain a competitive quality of patient care and achieve exceptional patient satisfaction, this paper recommends that a collective group of stakeholders, including the board of directors, commit capital funds to advance staffing through comprehensive training and increase the availability of proper testing equipment. Investing in our workforce to ensure thorough training for all employees is crucial to maintaining our high standards of care. Equally important, the purchase of additional testing equipment will enable us to conduct more comprehensive and routine tests, thereby improving diagnostic accuracy and patient outcomes.

Engaging with patients and healthcare practitioners will help foster their support in identifying and addressing areas of underperformance. By focusing on resource allocation and management in these critical areas, we can outperform the industry and maintain our facility as the premier provider of healthcare quality and patient satisfaction. Allocating funds for staffing, training, and equipment investments will yield a good return on investment and is essential to maintaining our competitiveness. Enhancing human resources through adequate education and improving service competencies will increase patient confidence and overall health outcomes.

Ultimately, this strategy will create the right business model and foster business sustainability and growth in the long run. Implementing higher accuracy in benchmarking coupled with higher patient satisfaction will enable the organization to differentiate itself from competitors, thereby reinforcing our brand promise of quality and reliable healthcare solutions. Investments in human resources and better-quality equipment have contributed to our long-term planning and established a strong market position for our healthcare facility. As discussed above, investing in these areas will greatly benefit our patients and improve overall health outcomes across our organization.

However, the ethics of a healthcare organization should primarily focus on patients. A key element of this imperative is the use of benchmarks, which allow us to measure our facility's performance against state and national averages. Without these benchmarks, Mercy Medical Center would struggle to conduct its operations effectively, as laws, regulations, and minimum requirements are clearly defined in the strict operational guidelines we must follow. Comparing our practices with these benchmarks ensures that we do not provide unsatisfactory or even dangerous health services to our patients.

Conclusion

Tools for evaluating the efficiency of different spheres of activity are crucial. In our case, the clinic must recruit enough competent human resources who have the time to sit down with patients and explain the relevance of specific tests and how they help monitor the patient’s reaction to diabetes. If the clinic is understaffed or if current employees lack the ability to educate patients and schedule tests, poor results will be observed in comparison indicators such as eye and foot tests. Training and appropriately staffing our team, while increasing our testing capacity, will significantly improve our benchmarks. This will not only enhance quality but also ensure that Mercy Medical Center can compete and remain compliant with state and national regulatory requirements.

By training our team members for their specific positions and recruiting the right human resources to fill available roles, coupled with increased testing capacities, we will tremendously enhance our benchmarks. This will improve the quality of services and ensure that Mercy Medical Center meets state and national accreditation requirements. Investing in these areas is not just about meeting standards but also bringing about substantial improvements in patient outcomes. This will be appreciated and supported by the community we serve. It is a strategic investment in the facility's human and technical resources, aimed at achieving our ultimate goal of delivering outstanding patient care and fostering healthier communities.

.

( 2 )

References

Kimbell, B., Rankin, D., Ashcroft, N. L., Varghese, L., Allen, J. M., Boughton, C. K., ... & CLOuD Consortium. (2020). What training, support, and resourcing do health professionals need to support people using a closed-loop system? A qualitative interview study with health professionals involved in the closed loop from onset in type 1 diabetes (CLOuD) trial. Diabetes technology & therapeutics, 22(6), 468-475.retrieved from: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/dia.2019.0466

LEVY, L. A. (2021). The exploding incidence and prevalence of diabetes. The Diabetic Foot. Retrieved from: https://podiatrym.com/pdf/2021/4/Levy421Web.pdf

Mercy Medical Center (Shakopee, MN)

Novitasari, D. (2022). Hospital Quality Service and Patient Satisfaction: How The Role of

Service Excellent and Service Quality?. Journal of Information Systems and Management

(JISMA), 1(1), 29-36. Retrieved from: https://jisma.org/index.php/jisma/article/view/255

Peimani, M., Nasli-Esfahani, E., & Sadeghi, R. (2020). Patients’ perceptions of patient–provider communication and diabetes care: A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies. Chronic illness, 16(1), 3-22.retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1742395318782378

Pourkazemi, A., Ghanbari, A., Khojamli, M., Balo, H., Hemmati, H., Jafaryparvar, Z., & Motamed, B. (2020). Diabetic foot care: knowledge and practice. BMC endocrine disorders, 20, 1-8. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12902-020-0512-y