The national healthcare issues/stressors
The Quadruple Aim provides broad categories of goals to pursue to maintain and improve healthcare. Within each goal are many issues that, if addressed successfully, may have a positive impact on outcomes. For example, healthcare leaders are being tasked to shift from an emphasis on disease management often provided in an acute care setting to health promotion and disease prevention delivered in primary care settings. Efforts in this area can have significant positive impacts by reducing the need for primary healthcare and by reducing the stress on the healthcare system.
Changes in the industry only serve to stress what has always been true; namely, that the healthcare field has always faced significant challenges, and that goals to improve healthcare will always involve multiple stakeholders. This should not seem surprising given the circumstances. Indeed, when a growing population needs care, there are factors involved such as the demands of providing that care and the rising costs associated with healthcare. Generally, it is not surprising that the field of healthcare is an industry facing multifaceted issues that evolve over time.
In this module’s Discussion, you reviewed some healthcare issues/stressors and selected one for further review. For this Assignment, you will consider in more detail the healthcare issue/stressor you selected. You will also review research that addresses the issue/stressor and write a white paper to your organization’s leadership that addresses the issue/stressor you selected.
To Prepare:
- Review the national healthcare issues/stressors presented in the Resources and reflect on the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected for study.
- Reflect on the feedback you received from your colleagues on your Discussion post for the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected.
- Identify and review two additional scholarly resources (not included in the Resources for this module) that focus on change strategies implemented by healthcare organizations to address your selected national healthcare issue/stressor.
The Assignment (3-4 Pages):
Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue
Develop a 3- to 4-page paper, written to your organization’s leadership team, addressing your selected national healthcare issue/stressor and how it is impacting your work setting. Be sure to address the following:
- Describe the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected and its impact on your organization. Use organizational data to quantify the impact (if necessary, seek assistance from leadership or appropriate stakeholders in your organization).
- Provide a brief summary of the two articles you reviewed from outside resources on the national healthcare issue/stressor. Explain how the healthcare issue/stressor is being addressed in other organizations.
- Summarize the strategies used to address the organizational impact of national healthcare issues/stressors presented in the scholarly resources you selected. Explain how they may impact your organization both positively and negatively. Be specific and provide examples.
Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue
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Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue
The National Healthcare Issues/Stressors
“Public health is a powerful tool to level that playing field, to bend the arc of our country away from distrust and disparities and back towards equity and justice.” (Leana S. Wen). The healthcare system in the United States encounters distinct issues influencing the quality of healthcare offered to Americans. It is vital to apprehend that there has been a requirement for implementing healthcare reforms in managing some of the problems hindering access to healthcare services. Healthcare providers experience high pressure to offer better outcomes at proportionally lower costs. The States disburses more resources on healthcare compared to other countries, and the high lavishing is anticipated to maximize in the future (Shrank et al., 2019). The main disquiet is that the high healthcare costs do not simplify better health outcomes. This essay will explore a national healthcare stressor and its impact on a healthcare organization, a summary of two articles, and strategies used to address the organizational impact of the national healthcare issue.
Nursing Staffing and its Impact on a Healthcare Organization
With the rising number of people indemnified by government-sponsored health insurance programs, a confrontation has developed on how to serve the nation’s healthcare demands. The number of financial investments has been on the rise, but the workforce has failed to catch up to the rising number of patients demanding healthcare services. This has mainly been the case with the rising aged population qualified for the Medicare and Medicaid programs (Blouin & Podjasek, 2019). This issue has oozed down to the healthcare facilities involving the organization working for. Nursing staffing is discussed as fundamental in patient outcomes and the quality of care delivered to patients. Numerous studies have highlighted the effects of nurse staffing on patient outcomes, with a majority mentioning that lower nurse staffing levels outcomes in missed care, a rising in nursing errors and, as an outcome, poor patient outcomes (Carthon et al., 2019). Also, low levels of nurse staffing lead to low work satisfaction and high burnout encountered by nurses. In the current organization, the rising number of patients has been moderately leading a strain on the nurses, with a raised frequency of floating in more than one unit. Handling the rising number of patients using short-term ways such as floating will not be appropriate in the long run as a need to develop a more concrete solution. In the amenity, data collected in the previous year indicated that there was a rise in the number of missed nursing care.
Summary of Studies on the Healthcare Issue
One of the selected articles is an article conducted by Griffiths et al. (2018). The study highlighted an apparent connection between nurse staffing and adverse patient outcomes involving mortality in in-patient facilities. The conductor also indicated that using missed care can be a more precise way of measuring the adequacy of nurse staffing or placing it in another way to measure better the causal connection on the effect of inadequate nurse staffing. The article’s authors summarized that reduced staffing levels resulted in increased missed care, leading to poor patient outcomes; hence, missed care was considered a good highlighter for assessing nurse staffing ratios in a healthcare unit, as per the study’s findings. Some ways of handling nurse staffing include ensuring there is minimal employee turnover to be possible within the healthcare facility. It is clear that nurses are in demand as the number of patients reacquiring their services has increased. Most nurses are willing to labor for organizations offering better working conditions, bringing the issue of organizational leadership. Good leadership makes the working condition of healthcare providers ideal, resulting in high job reparation and lowering nurse turnover (Boamah et al., 2018). It means the staffing issues come up with a formal staffing plan after engagement with the nursing staff. A rigid staffing framework is not absolute in an ever-changing and more flexible staffing plan enabling the facility to handle the uneven nurse-to-patient ratios.
Strategies Used to Address the Healthcare Issue
From the studies conducted, numerous commendations were indicated for handling the issue of low nurse staffing ratios. One of these ways is by developing effective strategies to increase nurse staffing and enhance the laboring conditions dealing with the issue of nurse turnover. Implementing such strategies may positively impact the organization as nurses will perform more efficiently with lower levels of burnout, resulting in positive patient outcomes. It may also impact the organization in a negative way as the organization is needed to maximize its expenditures on labor as it may not have adequate resources to do as required. A second strategy to be applied is using missed care as an indicator to edict policy changes in nursing staffing ratios. It can be considered a more practical unit of measurement in evaluating the adequacy of nursing staffing ratios (Griffiths et al., 2018). This perspective is constructive because the organization will adjust its staffing on a case-by-case basis instead of having a rigid method of evaluating nurse staffing requirements. Such strategies are vital to address the organizational impact of nurse staffing as a national healthcare stressor.
Conclusion
Nursing staffing is a grave healthcare issue that must be handled from a national to an organizational level to ensure better patient outcomes. The healthcare system in the United States encounters distinct issues influencing the quality of healthcare offered to Americans, and it is vital to apprehend that there has been a requirement for implementing healthcare reforms in managing some of the problems hindering access to healthcare services. Nursing staffing is discussed as fundamental in patient outcomes and the quality of care delivered to patients. Numerous studies have highlighted the effects of nurse staffing on patient outcomes, with a majority mentioning that lower nurse staffing levels outcomes in missed care, a rising in nursing errors and, as an outcome, poor patient outcomes. Some strategies are essential to address the healthcare issue, including developing effective strategies to maximize nurse staffing, improving the working condition, and using missed care to edict policy changes in nursing staffing ratios.
References
Blouin, A. S., & Podjasek, K. (2019). The continuing saga of nurse staffing: Historical and emerging challenges. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 49(4), 221-227.
Boamah, S. A., Laschinger, H. K. S., Wong, C., & Clarke, S. (2018). Effect of transformational leadership on job satisfaction and patient safety outcomes. Nursing outlook, 66(2), 180-189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2017.10.004
Carthon, J. M. B., Davis, L., Dierkes, A., Hatfield, L., Hedgeland, T., Holland, S., … & Aiken, L. H. (2019). Association of nurse engagement and nurse staffing on patient safety. Journal of nursing care quality, 34(1), 40.
Griffiths, P., Recio‐Saucedo, A., Dall’Ora, C., Briggs, J., Maruotti, A., Meredith, P., … & Missed Care Study Group. (2018). The association between nurse staffing and omissions in nursing care: A systematic review. Journal of advanced nursing, 74(7), 1474-1487. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.13564
Shrank, W. H., Rogstad, T. L., & Parekh, N. (2019). Waste in the US health care system: estimated costs and potential for savings. Jama, 322(15), 1501-1509.
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