Reducing the Harms that Patients Acquire from Hospitals

Executive Summary (Benchmark Assessment)
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Executive Summary (Benchmark Assessment)
The core goal of hospital and other health centers is the reduction or elimination of diseases and ailments in patients. However, it is a proven fact that hospitals often contribute to patient ailments by introducing new pathogens to the patients resulting in new diseases. The hospital also can contribute to the patients especially long term immobile patients developing pressure ulcers. The result is a reduction in the quality of care patients receive at hospitals. The summary therefore presents a potential solution to the problem. The summary looks at the possibility of reducing preventable harms in hospital scenarios (Nabhan, 2012). Preventable harms accrued from hospital present a challenge that can be solved by introduction of new protocols in hospitals that would put patient care as the priority. The initiative will have significant impact that will be discussed in the sections below.
Purpose of the program
The program's purpose will be to reduce the number and possibly eliminate preventable harms that patients acquire from hospitals. These include; hospital acquired infections such as Central Line-associated Blood Stream Infection (CLABSI) or pressure ulcers (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, 2004). Where patients acquire such infections, the standard of care provided by the hospital is compromised. The health of the patient will deteriorate as the onset of the new infection becomes apparent. These preventable harms to the patient further destroy the vital trust existing between the hospital and the community it serves. The result is an unsustainable health sector that does not have the necessary support from the society to achieve long term longevity. The hospital has to maintain a robust legal defense team to defend the hospital from litigation arising from its handling of patients. The program will allow it to save costs utilized in litigation and court ordered payouts (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2008). These funds can be channeled back into the hospital for health systems. The program ultimately is concerned with the development of new protocols that will ensure the hospital at the minimum reduces the number of preventable harms from the hospital. These protocols would lay particular emphasis on the use of nursing sensitive indicators. Nursing-sensitive indicators are mechanisms developed by the American Nursing Association (ANA) that allow the quality of care in a given health care facility to be examined (Isis Montalvo, 2007). The indicator offers insights into the quality of care patients receive that are directly attributable to the quality and quantity of care from nursing. Nursing-sensitive indicators look at 3 facets in delivery of care. These are; process of care, structure of care and patient focused outcomes. The indicator was redefined in 2002 to make it more comprehensive (Heslop, 2014)-. As such, it also measures the following; Patient satisfaction with pain management, medical information provided, nursing care and overall care, Pressure ulcers, Patient falls, Job satisfaction of nurses, Hospital-acquired infections etc. The indicators would be the modalities that would allow for the program to create impact and provide the basis for the program to be evaluated.
The program will create a committee which will comprise of nurses, doctors and administrative staff. The committee will identify the specific challenges and preventable harms arising from patient stay in the hospital. The committee will develop a robust framework geared towards reducing the preventable harms. The committee would be at liberty to bring in professionals from outside of the hospital to provide support in the proposed change. External professional would provide the committee with needed expertise on the subject. They would further be able to view the hospital and its processes from a fresh perspective. Professionals familiar with the Join Commission requirements for hospitals and their processes would be particularly helpful in ensuring the hospital maintains its JCAHO accreditation and improves its service delivery mechanisms.
Target Population
The target population for the program will be the patients that access the hospital services. This will pre-dominantly feature in-patient services. These patients typically access hospital services for a longer period of time. The program will concentrate on this cohort as it stands to receive the most significant impact of the program. However, other cohorts in the hospital community will be targeted as a consequence of the program. These include hospital staff who will receive the new training module to prepare them for the new treatment frameworks in the program. The training of the staff will be spearheaded by the committee formed to guide the new changes. The committee will communicate the need for the new frameworks to all hospital staff. This will inform all staff of the necessity of the new changes. This will allow all staff to be involved in the program. It will have the effect of increasing support for the program as well as apathy to the program. The committee will institute a new mandatory re-education for all hospital staff. The education program will inform staff of the changes that ought to occur and the benefits of instituting such changes. The committee would be tasked with ensuring the modalities of the protocols are worked on prior to the roll out of the changes. The committee will also be required to monitor the implementation of the program and report back to the hospital administration on its impact CITATION Joi04 \l 1033 (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organ...