Risk Management Plan
Using the analysis you concluded in the Week 3 Quality Improvement Plan: Justifying Cost assignment, address in further detail what would occur if the issue you selected was not resolved.
Write a 1,050-word APA-formatted analysis in which you answer the following questions:
• What is the risk to an organization if a problem is not solved?
• What can occur to the organization\’s reputation?
• Will there be an impact on the quality of performance by the staff?
• Will there be a direct impact on the retention of staff?
• Consider how many staff members will remain that are quality employees and how many will leave.
• Are there any legal implications the organization will face?
• Considering your research on the Joint Commission, will this have an issue with the Joint Commission and the funds the organization will receive for not addressing the issue?
• Will this impact the facility\’s benchmarks?
Cite and reference all sources
Cost Benefit Improvement
In healthcare, there are many incurred costs. Cost benefit improvement is one way of focusing on an issue, lowering the cost and improving patient satisfaction. In the emergency room, across the nation, wait times are an issue. There have been many solutions to this problem but one of the components is triage. Triage is the process in which the nurse will sort the patient into groups based on his or her complaint. The Emergency Severity Index(ESI) was started and is used universally to sort these patients by acuity. It is well established that prolonged emergency department length of stay (EDLOS) is associated with increased morbidity, mortality, decreased patient satisfaction, and increased left-without-being-seen (LWBS) rates. (Mohsin, et.,al, 2007) This is a cost which can be decreased and averted with proper training and fluid movement through the emergency department.
Cost of the improvement plan
The improvement capital cost will be minimal compared to the outcome. The financial impact of poor quality on healthcare organizations and the healthcare industry is substantial. The potential savings resulting from a reduction in the number of preventable injuries or deaths (medical errors) is a staggering figure. Discovery of strategies that allow this cost to be spent on the delivery of health care rather than on dealing with the consequences of poor-quality health care will certainly prove to be cost-effective in the long run. To accomplish this, access and structures need to be modified, processes changed, and policies updated. (Sadeghi, Barzi, Mikhail and Shabot, 2013). The end cost of improvement for this project would be 20,000 which includes labor costs, on-going costs and all other costs associated with the project.
Labor costs will be the most incurred. The need to educate the health care staff on ESI and the process of increasing movement through the emergency department is essential for this to work. Classes for ESI for all providers will be necessary, this equates to the whole emergency department staff to go through the class. The need to upgrade the triage note in the electronic health record(EHR) will also be necessary and prudent. The average ESI class which is 150$ per person, but as a hospital, with educators, this cost could be lowered if you train the educators to teach the class. The amount of staff in our current emergency department is 50 people including nurses, doctors and ancillary staff. The IT portion of upgrading is minimal with the current EHR, it may take 40 hours to complete, with an end cost of 1000$
The ongoing costs would be educating any new staff which come onboard. Updating and keeping the EHR current and usable. Another cost could be expanding out some of the education to include hospital floor staff, to help him or her understand our process and facilitate admissions.
Reputation for our facility, is not a top priority. Our facility is government run, and will be utilized, regardless of our reputation due to lack of health care. Improving our processes would take precedence.
Benefits of the Improvement plan
Improving the wait times will improve several areas of our hospital. Admission process from emergency department to hospital floor. Timely movement, and accurate triage assessments. Improvement upon patient satisfactions scores, and unwanted mistakes where patients were mis-triaged and a sentinel event could have taken place. The cost in this plan is primarily education,
The value of the improvement plan on the emergency room. The value saved could not be measured. The early intervention of a stoke or heart attack could be immense. In training personnel, and the ability to react quicker and more accurately, it could save the patient and hospital thousands of dollars. In health care, it is constantly changing, in order to keep up with change and the influx of more patients, new and better ways need to be created to keep up with the flow.
Conclusion
The improvement of the emergency room waiting times which are impacted by triage and admission processes need attention. It is a problem universally, it can impact a patient’s health and well being. The cost of the implementation is nominal when compared to a human life. Health care is changing with technology, practices, and life saving procedures. Education should be at the forefront in health care. Years ago, most nurses only had an associates degree or diploma. In the current health care status, more nurse have masters degrees and more. Simple interventions can save lives. Doing nothing should never be an alternative. I believe hospitals should find the most cost effective solutions to our health care problems, but solutions are needed.
