Dashboard and Health Care Benchmark Evaluation Simulation
Introduction
In every country in the world, health facilities are set up with one main goal; to provide the best possible health services to its patients. But achieving this goal isn’t as easy as it may sound. Health providers are forced to do benchmarks to be able to compete in line with the set state health care policies. Unlike in the late 20th Century, where executive information systems were used in analysis and decision making, which proved to have many drawbacks, present-day health care managers have been more inclined towards the use of performance dashboards. They convey information in a simple manner and are easy to use in analysis and decision making (Ghazisaeidi et al., 2015). For instance, in this case, Mercy Medical Centre (Shakopee, MN) adopts the use of benchmarks to evaluate both local and national readmissions, medical errors, and documentation errors.
Dashboard metrics evaluation with regard to set local and state healthcare policies
Under the local readmission rates, heart failure recorded the highest number compared to pneumonia, which recorded the lowest readmission rate. The trend was the same for the national readmission rate, but heart failure readmissions reduced by 4.4 while pneumonia reduced by 1.8. All departments that are Medical surgery, Labor and Delivery, Orthopedics, and Bariatrics recorded both medical failure cases and medical documentation errors. Bariatrics recorded the highest number of medical failures and documentation failures across all the dashboards, both occurring in the year 2016. Least medical fails were observed in the Labor and delivery department recording zero in medical fail cases in 2016 and only 3 cases in 2015. Although under documentation errors in the two years listed, the medical surgery department recorded the least number on average alongside the orthopedics department. In relation to medical policies like Medicaid for the minimum income people, these dashboard metrics are not appealing as it implies more costs are incurred by the patients in the readmission processes and those failed surgeries, extreme cases might lead to loss of life.
Challenges organization faces in meeting prescribed benchmarks
Even though specific benchmarks demand tailored requirements, the requirements set by states and federal policies pose a number of challenges that can be boiled down to one major problem. That is adding extra costs to a facility. In the process of meeting set standards by federal policy, the health facility has to train employees to build capacity. This time and funds incurred in those auxiliary training are a financial burden to those health facilities in their journey of service delivery. For example, in emergency preparedness, the state requires every health facility to adopt the emergency preparedness rule, but costs on the capacity building are left to the health facility stakeholders. Emergency preparedness rule would help in handling emergencies and reduce incidences that might come as a result of unpreparedness like medical errors and surgical failures, but it has its own adversaries to affected health facilities (Cascardo 2017).
An underperforming benchmark in the organization with the potential of improving
The facility faced a medical documentation problem consistent across all departments. At least each department each year recorded a medical documentation error. This is a problem that has the potential of greatly improving. Despite being widespread in the whole benchmarks, the bariatrics section recorded the highest medical errors in both 2015 and 2016, affecting the greatest number of patients in return this affects the staff service delivery in the department as well. Technically, medical records problems are having a huge effect on the patients affected. Having many record errors in a department handling obese individuals means service delivery to these individuals will be a great problem. But through research, the use of electronic medical records (EMR) will help a great deal as this approach comes with great efficiency. Electronic Medical Record is easy to view patients’ records; the interface of many computerized interfaces is easy to view and understand. Keeping records is also professional and reliable; as a result, giving care to patients becomes easy with such a documentation system. Giving and receiving customer feedback is exemplary, too; this eases prescription and monitoring of individual patients (Miller et al.,. 2004).
How solving documentation errors will impact overall quality.
To improve service delivery to patients, medical records play a greater role in learning about patients’ medical history and current state. Instead of writing down on paper as most physicians do, taking the responsibility to adopt and learn the use of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) will do away with most humane errors that result from trusting old ways of documenting. In return, medical errors like misdiagnosis and inappropriate prescriptions that result in increased readmissions and surgery errors will be reduced. In order to achieve the objective of providing the best possible health care services to patients, health facilities should take responsibility for embracing the electronic documentation method. This method improves service delivery putting into consideration the patient’s safety. Integrating information technology in medical record keeping will be of huge impact on facilities (Miller et al.,. 2004).
Conclusion
Carrying out a dashboard and health care benchmark evaluation to measure a health care facility’s performance is a great activity for facility stakeholders. It will help tell the present score and help in the future objective setting to the concerned managers. This would automatically result in better service delivery to patients abiding by set health policies.
References
Cascado D. (2017). Preparing To Meet The New CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule
Ghazisaeidi M, Safdari R, Torabi M, Mirzaee M, Farzi J, Goodini A. (2015). Development of Performance Dashboards in the Healthcare Sector: Key Practical Issues
Miller H R. & Sim I. (2004) Physicians’ Use of Electronic Medical Records: Barriers and Solutions A survey of physician practices shows slow but steady progress in adopting this new technology