A. Impacts of Business Practices, Regulatory Requirements, and Reimbursement on Patient-Centered Care
Patient-centered care is one of the key expectations for any health care institution, as it means that the quality of care would match the overall expectations while ensuring that the health care institutions build on their capacities to deliver on set out expectations (Bell, 2014). However, it must be noted that business practices, regulatory requirements, and reimbursement tend to have significant impacts on patient-centered care in a substantial way. Business practices tend to create a situation where health care organizations tend to find themselves in a situation where they become very competitive. Consequently, this results in a situation where health facilities tend to focus on providing care without considering the implications that this is having on patient-centered care. Business practices tend to fail in their bid to creating a productive environment through which to ensure that health organizations improve on the quality of care that they offer to their patients.
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Regulatory requirements, on the other hand, create some form of structured approach towards defining what is expected in health care institutions concerning the quality of services. In that view, this means that health organizations are much more likely to focus on patient-centered care as one of the requirements set out based on the regulations within the health care environment. Health care facilities find themselves in a situation where they are limited regarding the quality of services that they offer while considering the existing regulations (Constand, MacDermid, Dal Bello-Haas, & Law, 2014). Regarding reimbursement, this tends to have an impact on the quality of care, as it creates a reproach through which to ensure that health care facilities understand their essential role in promoting patient-centered care.
B1. Description of Health Setting Used in the PFCC
The health setting considered when filling out the PFCC is an acute care facility offering a wide array of health care services to an elderly population over the age of 60 years. Specifically, the institution operates as a nonprofit with the view being towards ensuring that the elderly population would be in a better position through which to get quality and affordable health care services matching their needs and demands. The institution has encountered a significant challenge concerning its leadership, which has created a situation where it has become difficult for it to deliver based on set out demands. However, the institution has embarked on a process of restructuring its service delivery approaches with the sole intention being towards improving its capacity towards providing patient-centered care.
B2. Strengths and Weaknesses of the Organization
From the PFCC, the main strength that can be noted revolves around the fact that the organization works hard towards ensuring that it delivers quality health care services that are personalized to individual patients. The organization has been working hard towards enhancing overall capacity for it to build its ability to focus its services towards the patient while ensuring that it matches patients’ needs and demands. On the other hand, the main weakness that can be noted concerning the organization focuses on the failure of the organization to support health teams. The outcome of not working in health teams is that it has become extremely challenging for the individual health professionals to focus on improving the quality of care that they offer to the patients as part of advance patient-centered care.
C. Area of Improvement
The city of improvement that can be noted from the evaluation of the organization is on non-effective responses to medical errors, which are becoming a common occurrence within the organization. The patients find themselves in a situation where they are facing high likelihoods of medical errors arising from a non-personalized care approach from the health professionals operating within the organization. The management within the organization has the ability and capacity through which to deal with this challenge by enforcing an overall shift in focus toward personalized care as part of promoting patient-centered health care services. Additionally, this would also mean that the health professionals would be in a position through which to maximize on the overall needs and demands that can be identified from each of the patients to support quality care delivery.
C1. Strategy to Increase Patient-Centeredness
The primary strategy to increase patient-centeredness while focusing on the weakness that has been identified in the previous section would involve a process of having to hire more staff within the facility. The hiring of more staff would mean that the organization would have the requisite number of nurses and support staff to offer the expected quality of care to the individual patients coming into the facility. In this strategy, the management of the organization would be expected to come up with a structured approach through which to ensure that the staffing level within the facility is adequate to meet the demand from the patients (Liberati, Gorli, Moja, Galuppo, Ripamonti, & Scaratti, 2015). That would help in avoiding cases that include burnout and compassion fatigue, which are likely to affect service delivery within the health care facility.
C1a. Application of System or Change Theory
In the development of the staffing strategy, the system theory would be most appropriate considering that it will help in providing valid information on the functioning of the system with the view that this would help determine the extent to which the organization is facing a staffing shortage. The system theory seeks to highlight the independence of each part of an organization with the focus being towards ensuring that it operates as a system with the view that this would help in identification of any areas that require more staff (Davis Boykins, 2014). The theory will assist in identifying the extent to which low staffing levels are affecting the overall ability for the institution to deliver on expected quality outcomes. Additionally, this will also help towards highlighting the expected strategies that the organization ought to take as part of its changes towards matching overall expectations.
C2. Financial Implications
From an economic perspective, the implementation of this strategy is expected to have severe implications for the organization, as it will create a situation where the organization would be expected to spend more as a result of higher staffing levels. It must be noted that recruitment of new staff to fill some of the gaps within the health organization may require notable funding for the human resource department. Additionally, this would mean that the organization would spend more every month in offering remuneration for the additional staff hired to fill some of the gaps within the organization. That means that the organization would need to change its operational costs with the view being towards accommodating the changes in the staffing levels.
C3. Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Strategy
The evaluation of the strategy will focus more on the trying to determine the satisfaction levels among individual patients. An increase in the satisfaction levels among patients would mean that indeed the strategy has been effective towards creating a new approach through which to deliver quality care (Bradley & Kivlahan, 2014). The management would need to come up with a strategic approach through which to evaluate satisfaction levels among individual patients to determine whether there is a notable change after implementation of the strategy. That would mean having to engage with the patients on a one-on-one basis with the focus being towards determining whether the quality of services that they match their set out needs and demands in seeking care within the organization.
D. Multidisciplinary Team
The following is an analysis of the potential members of the interdisciplinary team that will assist in the implementation of the strategy, as has been set out within the previous section, and the role of each of these members.
Human Resource Manager – The inclusion of the human resource manager would be essential considering that the manager will help in the development of a recruitment strategy that the organization may need to use as part of improving staffing levels. The manager will also assist in the development of a charter focusing on the differentiated positions that are to be filled based on the recruitment approach taken as part of the organization.
Social Worker – The team will also include a social worker, who will have a crucial role in ensuring that the positions created as part of the staffing strategy match the expectations in promoting quality service delivery. The social worker will be involved in the process of having to engage with the patients to determine some of the critical areas where staffing is required. From that perspective, it will be much easier for the social worker to provide valid insight on some of the essential changes that the organization ought to anticipate as it seeks to improve on the overall capacity to deliver quality outcomes.
Nursing Leadership – The team will also involve the leadership in nursing within the organization, as nurses play a critical role in the services offered to the patients within the facility. The leadership will help in highlighting some of the challenges that nurses are facing concerning their leadership with the sole focus being towards determining the actual number of nurses that would be required for the institution to be able to provide patient-centered care.
D1. Cultural Diversity
Cultural diversity within the team will help support patient-centered and culturally competent care, as individual team members will seek to provide information on some of the critical areas that they believe are important towards defining quality care. The idea of having cultural diversity within the team would mean that the opinions presented would not only focus on a specific culture but would also represent differentiated cultures. The outcome of this is that it will help towards creating a somewhat practical approach through which to enhance overall capacities in matching set out expectations while ensuring that the team delivers on its mandate. A diverse cultural team has a higher possibility of providing that the patients, who are culturally diverse, receive the best quality of care within the institution.
D2. Leadership Style
In developing the team, the leadership style that would be most appropriate would be emotional leadership through which to ensure that the followers are directed towards a common goal. In this leadership style, one of the key aspects to note is that the team will be expected to reflect much of its efforts towards the ensuring that the organization provides the expected quality of care. The adoption of this leadership style would also help towards ensuring that each of the team members understands the importance of having to remain emotionally invested within the common goal of the team. That would mean that the team would be in a rather effective position through which to achieve set goals considering that each of the team members will have some form of emotional investment in the team’s effort.
D3. Implementation of the Strategy
The team will be expected to hold meetings in which to discuss issues associated with low staffing levels within the organization with the critical element of focus being towards ensuring that they develop a recruitment strategy for effective hiring of more staff. Through these meetings, the teams would be in a somewhat effective position to determine the exact number of staff that would be hired to fill out the existing gap within the organization. Additionally, this will also help towards ensuring the teams develop clear job descriptions for each of the positions that is to be filled within the organization. That would assist in providing that each of the staff hired has a clear understanding of what is expected of him or her as part of building overall capacity to match set out expectations in promoting patient-centered care.
D4. Communication of Identified Strategy and Intended Outcomes
The team will communicate the identified strategy through memos directed to other staff members within the organization, which will also help in outlining some of the intended outcomes based on the implementation of the strategy. The idea of using memos would contribute towards creating an effective avenue through which the team would be able to receive support from other staff within the institution. Additionally, this would also mean that the team will be in a somewhat effective position that would allow them to communicate their progress concerning the implementation of the strategy and how it is expected to deal with the situation at hand. Generally, this means that the team would be in a position through which to advance its capacity through its use of memos as part of promoting communication.
D5. Team’s Self-Assessment Skills
The specific tool that would be effective in the team’s self-assessment skills will be Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, which will be of great value towards determining whether the team is cohesive regarding its abilities to deliver on set out objectives. The tool will help in ensuring that each member of the team can conduct a self-assessment of the team with the key focus being on its skills. The expected outcome is that this will help towards creating a somewhat effective avenue through which to maximize the team's overall abilities to deliver on set out goals and objectives. Additionally, this will also help towards determining whether the members of the team are cohesive regarding their set out objectives while defining their respective capacities to match overall outcomes.
References
Bell, L. (2014). Patient-centered care. American Journal of Critical Care , 23 (4), 325-325.
Bradley, K. A., & Kivlahan, D. R. (2014). Bringing patient-centered care to patients with alcohol use disorders. Jama , 311 (18), 1861-1862.
Constand, M. K., MacDermid, J. C., Dal Bello-Haas, V., & Law, M. (2014). Scoping review of patient-centered care approaches in healthcare. BMC health services research , 14 (1), 271.
Davis Boykins, A. (2014). Core communication competencies in patient-centered care. ABNF Journal , 25 (2).
Liberati, E. G., Gorli, M., Moja, L., Galuppo, L., Ripamonti, S., & Scaratti, G. (2015). Exploring the practice of patient centered care: The role of ethnography and reflexivity. Social Science & Medicine , 133 , 45-52.
