Measurement of Resources

Everyone needs healthcare, and thus, the health sector is a critical domain that has unlimited demand. Similarly, resources in healthcare face a high demand, which necessitates strategic management to ensure adequacy. Measuring resources needed help to create a balanced resource distribution for an improved patient experience, as revealed in the four healthcare settings.

Patients Experience

In this setting, patient complications and incidences are critical topics that demand diligence in the medical setting. De Vos et al. (2019) provides insights from a study named The Association Between Complications, Incidents, and Patient Experience: Retrospective Linkage of Routine Patient Experience Surveys and Safety Data. De Vos et al. (2019) routinely collected data of patient-reported experiences of 4236 surgical inpatients from an academic center (the name is concealed) between April 2014 and December of 2015. This study aimed to identify the linkage between patient experience and surgical care by quantifying the association between complications, incidents, and patient experience.

The study sampled a general population of 4236 surgical inpatients. They were required to self-report their experiences using a Picker Patient Experience Questionnaire 15, which used fifteen questions to cover seven experience dimensions. Results revealed a significant association between complications and incidences with nonpositive experiences. A similar study will help my future organization, where self-reported patient incidences will reveal poor patient experiences. It could help in identifying areas in care that require improvement for patient experience.

Ambulatory/ Office-Based Care

Patient safety is a critical topic in this setting, and as such, practitioners should ensure patient safety, especially in the ambulatory. One way to ensure patient safety in office-based care is avoiding accidental puncture, as investigated by (Utter et al., 2009). In their study titles Positive predictive value of the AHRQ accidental puncture or laceration patient safety indicator, Utter et al. (2009) reports the positive predictive value (PPV) of standard for quality of care endorsed by AHRQ.

This study sampled a general patient population whose hospitalization records met the Patient Safety Indicator (PSI) 15. These were from 32 geographically different teaching and non-teaching clinical facilities in the USA. The survey focused on inpatient records, from which data was gathered using a standard instrument. Results indicate that a significant number of accidental puncture or laceration were related to ambulatory errors. For instance, 43% of lacerations were found to result from complications other than normal operative conduct. A similar study may be conducted in other medical settings, such as in the pharmacy to intervene situations that compromise patient safety. That would reduce the admission period and readmission – which indicates better treatment outcomes.

Hospital Inpatient Services

In this category, diagnostic efficiency is a topic worth looking into. For instance, time spent producing laboratory tests determines may delay or speed up the treatment process for an inpatient. Xu et al. (2019) investigate the prevalence of low-yield inpatient diagnostic lab tests in a study titled Prevalence and Predictability of Low-Yield Inpatient Laboratory Diagnostic Tests. They conduct a survey on inpatients who are admitted to 3 tertiary academic medical centers in the USA.

The participants were the general inpatient population. They used a retrospective diagnostic study with multivariable prediction models to collect data from 116 637 inpatients treated at Stanford University Hospital, 60 929 inpatients treated at the University of Michigan, and 13 940 patients treated at the University of California. Results indicated a crisis in the testing and provision of test results in the three facilities. They also reveal that low-yield prevalence is seldom to identify unless a data-driven model is used. Such a study will help my future organization measure the efficiency of inpatient care, especially those that are challenging to assess without a data-driven tool. It will help in identifying improvement areas to make the inpatient experience seamless and reduce the admission period.

Hospital Outpatient Services

I chose to address the management of chronic pain and prescription of opioids. Thus far, abuse of opioids is a crisis in the USA, which largely involves the prescription policies in pharmaceuticals. Darnall et al. (2018) report from a survey patriating to this topic titled Patient-Centered Prescription Opioid Tapering in Community Outpatients With Chronic Pain. This study aimed to identify the implications of patient-centered opioid prescriptions for chronic pain to outpatients for whom behavioral treatment was not applicable.

The patients’ demographics are not provided, but eligible participants consented to the study. For instance, of all the 110 eligible participants, 82 agreed to tamper with their opioid dosage, which was reduced by 5% for two months. They would further reduce the dosage by 10% per week after the two months. This study aimed at finding the dosage that would work for each patient – to personalize prescription. This study is critical now and in my future organization to avoid underdosing or overdose. While it might take extra resources to personalize prescription, patient-centered prescriptions might improve treatment outcomes.

Conclusion

Surveys are valuable sources of data that enable healthcare facilities to make informed decisions regarding resource allocations. Each healthcare setting has its unique needs that affect the quality of care. Thus, data-driven strategic management would enable health facilities to achieve an excellent measurement and allocation of resources across all settings.

References

Darnall, B., Ziadni, M., Stieg, R., Mackey, I., Kao, M., & Flood, P. (2018). Patient-Centered Prescription Opioid Tapering in Community Outpatients With Chronic Pain. JAMA Internal Medicine, 178(5), 707. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.8709

de Vos, M., Hamming, J., Boosman, H., & Marang-van de Mheen, P. (2019). The Association Between Complications, Incidents, and Patient Experience. Journal Of Patient Safety, Publish Ahead of Print. https://doi.org/10.1097/pts.0000000000000581

Utter, G., Zrelak, P., Baron, R., Tancredi, D., Sadeghi, B., Geppert, J., & Romano, P. (2009). Positive Predictive Value of the AHRQ Accidental Puncture or Laceration Patient Safety Indicator. Annals Of Surgery, 250(6), 1041-1045. https://doi.org/10.1097/sla.0b013e3181afe095

Xu, S., Hom, J., Balasubramanian, S., Schroeder, L., Najafi, N., Roy, S., & Chen, J. (2019). Prevalence and Predictability of Low-Yield Inpatient Laboratory Diagnostic Tests. JAMA Network Open, 2(9), e1910967. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.10967