Discussing Survey Results and Plan

¶ … business plan will help determine effective ways to improve recently reported HCAHPS scores for the organization as a whole. The detailed plan and report shows how educational challenges or delays may play a part in influencing low HCAHPS scores. Shared accountability along with an effective presentation will allow the board to see not only what causes HCAHPS low scores, but how the organization can avoid such low scores. Educational dynamics within any given population may potentially influence the higher occurrence of HCAHPS scores. Educational delays that stem from developmental issues like mental illness or chronic disease and educational delays brought on by financial hardship will be discussed. The strategic plan will also incorporate ideas of shared accountability between personnel, payers, patients, and medical providers.

Educational Delays

Educational delays can exist for several reasons. The most commonly interpreted are physical and mental delays. People with mental health issues like depression and anxiety are less prone to do things that involve tedious effort. For example, taking surveys may be harder to do versus watching a video. These kinds of people may not feel any motivation to take part in anything, especially answering questions and putting information down like is commonly done in a survey. Then there are educational delays/challenges based on a person's financial situation.

What this may mean is, a person may come from a low income neighborhood that has a lot of criminal activity and people in it that do not wish to learn or cannot afford to go to college/university. Although these people have potentially the intelligence and ability to do well in an educational setting, they are unable to due to their financial circumstances. They then do not get to experience the uplifting environment of higher education and become stuck in dead end jobs, further adding to development of mental health problems. While this does not occur to all people living in low-income neighborhoods, it does occur often.

Strategic Plan

To develop the strategic plan, it is important first to examine the selected hospital. The selected hospital is ALBERT EINSTEIN MEDICAL CENTER, 5501 OLD YORK ROAD, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19141, (215) *** This is an acute care hospital that provides emergency services and participates in nursing care registry and cardiac surgery registry. It has the capability to receive electronically lab results and can track patients' test, referrals, and lab results electronically between visits. The hospital uses both inpatient and outpatient safe surgery checklist. Compared to the national and Pennsylvania average, Albert Einstein Medical Center scored lower on everything than national and state scores. There was a large difference of about 12% on patients who reported that their bathroom and room were always clean at 61%. The state average is 73% and the national average is 74%. Another large difference is the 57% of patients who answered yes to recommending the hospital. The national average is 71% and the state average is 70%.

In order to improve these two large differences in scores: cleanliness and patient satisfaction, it is important to set up monthly meetings between personnel in charge of cleaning hospital rooms and patient care. Janitors should be regularly told to clean patient's rooms and bathrooms on a daily basis to ensure cleanliness. Nurses and nursing assistants must be told to adhere to standards of care for each patient by coordinating and assigning a lists of patients per nurse with a nursing assistant to aid in the various duties like bathing and glucose monitoring. Having monthly meetings for both these personnel types will allow smoother communication and delivery of effective standards of care that will improve the hospitals scores in these two main issues.