Cleveland Clinic is one of the five leading multi-specialty medical center as well as an educational institute in the United States (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2014). It was founded in 1921 and since then, it has developed tremendously with its successful strategy focusing on patient care and giving patients priority with the assistance of incomparable quality of health care given to patients. The clinic has tried to prioritize patient care because it does not want to get into a situation where it can be forced to push its employees to enhance the patient experience.
The clinic established the office of patient experience that was comprised of a unique team to ensure that health care is patient-centered by collaborating with caregivers to surpass the families and patients’ expectation. This reveals the extent to which the clinic goes to abide on their motto of giving better patient care utmost significance. Cleveland Clinic focuses on providing safe care, high-quality care and then satisfaction and experience. As much as Cleveland Clinic has been keen on their patient care, it has been confirmed that their patients' concerns were not addressed as expected. The nurses responded slowly and further took a lot of time before getting the required medicine to the patients who are experiencing pain. At times, it took longer in cases when the nurses were busy attending to other patients.
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There is a myriad of best alternatives that Cleveland Clinic is required to implement to timely address their patients' concerns. To start with, the clinic ought to redirect non-emergency patients to other caregivers. Studies indicate that a large portion of patients arrives with less urgent need of care. These kinds of patients may take up a lot of time and personnel to diagnose and prioritize treatment which makes patient call light time longer as expected. It is therefore important for nurses to educate these kinds of patients on the suitable use of emergency room services and redirect them to caregivers in other clinics and hospitals. Another alternative to reduce slow response to patients’ concerns in Cleveland Clinic is scheduling more staffs during peak times. This can be achieved by utilizing basic predictive programming which can estimate how busy it might be at any given time. This will enable the manager to allocate more staff on shifts that have a high probability of being busier to accommodate the anticipated patients to maintain reasonable and safe wait times. At some time, more nurses can be alerted in case of an increased number of patients.
In response to increasing staff members to attend to this surging number of patients, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurses should be trained to triage patients. To efficiently address patients concerns without delay, the nurses ought to change the flow of patient within the clinic. In this regard, nurses or physicians should reduce the time wasted on registering, examining as well as triaging especially if the clinic has limited staffs or managed inefficiently. The change of flow will be initiated by putting a physician or nurse to examine patients shortly after arrival. This can tremendously speed up patients encounters, do away with non-urgent cases and minimize the time required for patients with life-threatening times. According to some scholars, patients who require medical attention in 2009 had less than 14 minutes to survive twice that amount of time longer in more recent years. Additionally, registering patients at their bedsides will minimize patient wait times and further give caregivers enough time to examine the injury of patient and triage them.
Selected Alternatives
The most viable alternative to effectively address patients concerns is changing patients flow within Cleveland Clinic. Patient flow is the patient movement from one place to another in a health facility. Changing or improving patient flow is a crucial segment of process management in clinics and other healthcare facilities. The manager of Cleveland Clinic ought to oversee the performance of the clinic across various dimensions to timely respond to patients concerns and avoid overcrowding which hinders care quality, makes health care costs and further compromises community trust. Maximizing patient flow in Cleveland Clinic will promptly, proficiently and effectively accomplish the demand for care by passing patients through care pathways while enhancing care, health results and patient safety (French, 2012). The patient flow will be improved by streamlining patient admissions and handoffs, introducing a smooth surgical schedule and further optimizing charges. The smooth surgical schedule will be optimized by spacing elective surgeries to assist in reducing strain on post-operative units rather than blocking schedule.
The Cleveland Clinic should increase the rate at which they discharge in the morning to give patients sufficient time to fill prescriptions and settle in at their homes and give chances to incoming patients. According to (Small, D., Small, R., 2011), the significance of developing a patient flow improvement team is to provide careful thought to its composition. Numerous researchers have revealed the advantages of developing a multidisciplinary to strategize to plan quality improvement interventions. After changing the flow of patients, the manager should identify the right strategy for any intervention. Balik et al. (2011) indicate that hospitals that devote adequate time for careful selection of strategies always save a lot of time by avoiding key adjustments that may occur. The changing patients flow within Cleveland Clinic should also be incorporated with an improved call light management. This will help in examining the level of patients’ pain, offer toileting help and further assess patient comfort and position. It is evident that hospitals that support patient flow changes with appropriate cultural transformation will be at a better position to enhance patient flow.
With regard to Cleveland Clinic, there are various measures that can be implemented to positively impact the future practice of RN. One of the measures is developing processes that ensure exclusive patient flow throughout the clinic. Secondly, the clinic should manage patient boarding and work tirelessly to minimize the length of time that emergency patient board. The clinic should also ensure that patients in overflow locations are entitled to proper care. Another significant measure that the clinic needs to put in place is reviewing the outcome of flow management initiatives to ensure whether the clinic has achieved its stated goals and objectives. Putting these measures into consideration will immensely impact the RN. As much as leadership skills are commonly regarded as crucial for managers and administrators, they are also significant for nursing staff.
Currently, the health care facility is economically oriented and it must, therefore, aim at the safety as well as better outcomes of patients by using exemplary leadership skills to improve the performance of nurses. The leaders in the nursing profession are required to persuasively communicate with nurses to come to an empathetic comprehension of complex circumstances. Permitting RN to convince communicate with a patient will enable them to understand the challenges associated with managing a sensitive situation such as a patient experiencing a cardiac arrest. Besides, the leaders in health care ought to have a spiritual purpose as a skill. This will help them in self-reflection and meditative thinking that will consequently help them in understanding personal values that can be developed and mature into value-based leadership. It is imperative to develop in all parts to properly lead, have a positive image and further increase job performance. More so, leaders in the nursing profession should also empower teamwork. This skill will ensure that both leaders and nurses work for the common good of patients.
Conclusion
Conclusively, it is evident from this case study that Cleveland Clinic is one of the clinics that has put patient needs as the first priority. To achieve its goals and objectives efficiently, it is important for the clinic to change and further improve patient flow by establishing clear processes that ensure patient flow in the clinic as well as manage patient boarding. As much as there are numerous better alternatives, changing patient flow will be the best alternative in this case.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2014). CAHPS®: Surveys and tools to advance patient-centered care . Retrieved from https://www.cahps.ahrq.gov/default.asp on 6 th May, 2019
Balik, B., Conway, J., Zipperer, L., & Watson, J. (2011). Achieving an exceptional patient and family experience of inpatient hospital care. Retrieved from IHI.org: www.ihi.org/IHI/Results/WhitePapers/AchievingExceptionalPatientFamilyExperienceHospitalCareWhitePaper.htm on 6 th May, 2019
French, P. (2012). What is the evidence on evidence-based nursing? An epistemological concern. Journal Of Advanced Nursing , 37 (3), 250-257.
Small, D., Small, R., (2011) "Patients First! Engaging the Hearts and Minds of Nurses with a Patient-Centered Practice Model" OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing Vol. 16, No. 2, Manuscript 2.
