Policy and procedure development and evaluation

Policies and procedures that are used by any hospital are vital to the care of its patients and can help decrease the length of the patients' stay by days or even weeks in some cases, depending on how these procedures and policies are implemented and enforced by the doctors, nurses, and other staff members at the facility. The policy of having wristbands of different colors for Allergies, DNR Orders, and Fall Risks helps to avoid errors with medications, procedures, and treatments that could otherwise take place due to misreading of charts or miscoding of a patient's condition (Polices, 2007). Those errors can cause significant and sometimes irreparable harm to a patient, and can lead to a much longer stay that could result in significantly more cost to the patient and insurance company, as well as stress, pain, and suffering that could have otherwise been avoided by taking a few simple precautions. When the wristbands are used, patients can be categorized more easily and that makes it less difficult for nurses, doctors, and others to determine which risks a particular patient may have. In understanding these risks, hospital staff can focus on mitigating any problems for patients, thus helping the patient leave the hospital more quickly and avoiding a more drawn-out, lengthy stay that could expose the patient to more problems and put him or her at greater risk of developing an infection or debilitating condition.

Another important thing that using color coded wristbands can do for a hospital and its patients is to help lower, or at least stabilize, the costs that are associated with caring for patients and helping them to become well again (Policies, 2007). This is done through a reduction in errors, as any time a patient's treatment goes awry and there are errors that have to be corrected, the hospital has to spend money to correct the problems that it inadvertently caused. Another issue with errors in a hospital setting is that they can sometimes result in death or serious difficulty, for which the hospital can be sued and required to pay out a very large settlement to the victim or the victim's family, which can cause costs to rise in order to cover those settlements. Even something as simple as colored wristbands for patients in the hospital can help reduce the number of errors, thereby reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries that could result in a patient or that patient's family suing the hospital for large amounts of money that would have to be paid out and would cause costs to rise. Additionally, the wristbands make medication, treatment, and procedure decisions more accurate, reducing the chances that a patient will be given something more expensive than required or something that he or she does not actually need, which would also raise costs.