NURS-FPX4040 Assessment 4 Paper

Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators Sample

The quality and quantity of nursing care significantly impact patient outcomes. According to the American Nurses Association (2018), nursing-sensitive quality indicators (NSQI), whether patient outcomes or organizational performance, are aspects of nursing care directly influenced by the quality and quantity of nursing care. NSQI allows for the evaluation of clinical performance, provides a track record, can be used as a comparison measure against other hospitals in the national and state governments, and finally, aids in establishing evidence that improves patient care quality (Wong et al. 2020). Hospital readmission rates, as an NSQI, are extensively elaborated in relation to technology and its application in monitoring NSQIs in the following discussion.

Interdisciplinary Role in Collecting and Reporting NSQI Data to enhance Patient Safety, Outcomes, and Organizational Performance

For the purposes of this discussion, the NSQI chosen is hospital readmission rates. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (2019), hospital readmission rates are defined as admissions to a hospital within 30 days of being discharged from a previous hospital stay. Many factors contribute to high hospital readmission rates, including inappropriate treatment, poor medication adherence, failed home care, poor social planning, and so on. To reduce readmission rates, particularly for chronic diseases such as Diabetes Mellitus (DM), heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), technology, particularly Telehealth, is used to ensure continuity of care while patients are at home and to bridge the gap between the patient and the hospital.

The collection and reporting of NSQI require a well-organized team and systems. Data on patient hospital readmission rates must be collected by an interdisciplinary team comprised of nurses, doctors, the records department, and the health informatics team. Electronic health records (EHR) have simplified data collection by allowing users to enter and organize information in a word or excel documents. The EHR eliminates the documentation burden of the traditional paper-based system while also lowering the risk of errors caused by doctors’ poor penmanship and omissions (Kruse et al., 2018). When a patient is readmitted, the data is entered into the EHR so that at the end of the month, the prevalence of hospital readmission within the previous 30 days can be calculated and compared to other hospitals, and interventions to reduce readmission rates can be designed and implemented.

The data collected is reported at regular intervals, such as quarterly in my institution. Reporting is accomplished by converting data into text, graphs, tables, and scales. For example, in calculating hospital readmission rates, the numerator is the number of patients readmitted within 30 days of admission, while the denominator is the total number of elective and urgent admissions, and the result is converted to a percentage. This percentage is used to compare to previous months’ data as well as data from other hospitals.

The quality indicator impacts the patients’ safety and care, and the organization’s performance. Upadhyay et al. (2019) studied 98 hospitals in Washington State from 2012 to 2014 to see if readmission rates affected patient care, safety, and hospital financial performance. The findings show that readmission of patients puts them at a high risk of nosocomial infections because they are acutely ill and have low immunity during that time, compromising their safety.

Furthermore, readmission of patients exacerbates the already existing nurse and physician shortages by resulting in a high patient-nurse ratio. The findings also revealed that the hospital’s financial performance faced a two-pronged outcome: (1) the hospital could either spend more on treating conditions such as acute myocardial infections, reducing operating revenues, or (2) the hospital could generate more revenue by treating so many patients.

How Healthcare Organizations Use NSQI Data to Enhance Patient Safety, Patient Care Outcomes, and Organizational Performance

Since the NSQI are used to assess nursing and clinical performance, they serve as a foundation for tracking patient care outcomes and organizational performance. For example, even though creating readmission charts is time-consuming, the figures are used to compare rates with previous months and with other hospitals. As a result, hospitals strive to reduce readmission rates by implementing strategies to improve patient safety and care outcomes. In a systematic review, Mashhadi et al. (2021) describe the use of post-discharge mHealth and a Teach-Back Communication method to reduce readmission rates. The findings revealed a significant reduction in readmission rates following the use of mHealth technology, in which patients attended scheduled visits with health care providers and received health education on self-management strategies while at home.

In terms of organizational performance, readmission rates can have two effects on the hospital. High readmission rates cause the hospital to incur additional costs for treating the conditions, resulting in low operating revenues (Mashhadi et al., 2021). On the other hand, hospitals could make huge profits from treating readmitted patients, increasing their revenue (Mashhadi et al., 2021). From the preceding explanations, it is clear that NSQI impacts patients and hospitals in various ways, both positively and negatively.

How NSQI Established Evidence-Based Guidelines

In today’s healthcare, it’s impossible to avoid incorporating technology into patient care. Nurses, particularly those with backgrounds in health informatics, play a critical role in ensuring the integration’s success. Because nurses make up the majority of healthcare workers, they actively participate in collecting and reporting NSQI data, which is then used to develop evidence-based guidelines (Ju et al., 2018 NURS-FPX4040 Assessment 4 Paper). For example, in terms of readmission rates, nurses may tabulate or report monthly readmission rates in graphs or textual format.

This information is compared to other hospitals in the national or state government. If the hospital’s readmission rates do not meet the target, the hospital will develop strategies and guidelines to improve its performance. Reduced readmission rates can be achieved through policy changes, the use of technology, and the use of medications, among other strategies (Ju et al., 2018). Finally, with increased implementation of readmission-reduction strategies, patient safety, care outcomes, and organizational performance improve more quickly.

Conclusion

In summary, nursing knowledge and practice are constantly changing and being updated, necessitating continuous improvement of knowledge and skills. The use of NSQI is one strategy for broadening the body of nursing knowledge and improving care quality. The hospital readmission chart keeps track of the facility’s monthly readmission rates, and assists care providers and administration in working toward interventions that reduce the rate, improve patient safety and outcomes, and organizational performance. As a result, continuous data collection and reporting of NSQI is important because it contributes to developing evidence-based guidelines to ensure the most current and up-to-date care. NURS-FPX4040 Assessment 4 Paper