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Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

Walden University Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods-Step-By-Step Guide

This guide will demonstrate how to complete the Walden University Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods assignment based on general principles of academic writing. Here, we will show you the A, B, Cs of completing an academic paper, irrespective of the instructions. After guiding you through what to do, the guide will leave one or two sample essays at the end to highlight the various sections discussed below.

How to Research and Prepare for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

Whether one passes or fails an academic assignment such as the Walden University Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods depends on the preparation done beforehand. The first thing to do once you receive an assignment is to quickly skim through the requirements. Once that is done, start going through the instructions one by one to clearly understand what the instructor wants. The most important thing here is to understand the required format—whether it is APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.

After understanding the requirements of the paper, the next phase is to gather relevant materials. The first place to start the research process is the weekly resources. Go through the resources provided in the instructions to determine which ones fit the assignment. After reviewing the provided resources, use the university library to search for additional resources. After gathering sufficient and necessary resources, you are now ready to start drafting your paper.

How to Write the Introduction for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

The introduction for the Walden University Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods is where you tell the instructor what your paper will encompass. In three to four statements, highlight the important points that will form the basis of your paper. Here, you can include statistics to show the importance of the topic you will be discussing. At the end of the introduction, write a clear purpose statement outlining what exactly will be contained in the paper. This statement will start with “The purpose of this paper…” and then proceed to outline the various sections of the instructions.

How to Write the Body for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

After the introduction, move into the main part of the Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods assignment, which is the body. Given that the paper you will be writing is not experimental, the way you organize the headings and subheadings of your paper is critically important. In some cases, you might have to use more subheadings to properly organize the assignment. The organization will depend on the rubric provided. Carefully examine the rubric, as it will contain all the detailed requirements of the assignment. Sometimes, the rubric will have information that the normal instructions lack.

Another important factor to consider at this point is how to do citations. In-text citations are fundamental as they support the arguments and points you make in the paper. At this point, the resources gathered at the beginning will come in handy. Integrating the ideas of the authors with your own will ensure that you produce a comprehensive paper. Also, follow the given citation format. In most cases, APA 7 is the preferred format for nursing assignments.

How to Write the Conclusion for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

After completing the main sections, write the conclusion of your paper. The conclusion is a summary of the main points you made in your paper. However, you need to rewrite the points and not simply copy and paste them. By restating the points from each subheading, you will provide a nuanced overview of the assignment to the reader.

How to Format the References List for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

The very last part of your paper involves listing the sources used in your paper. These sources should be listed in alphabetical order and double-spaced. Additionally, use a hanging indent for each source that appears in this list. Lastly, only the sources cited within the body of the paper should appear here.

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Sample Answer for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

I have worked in numerous facilities throughout the US and abroad as a travel nurse. But, for the past 16 years, I had been working in the Military Treatment Facilities, where I was stationed in the Army, and the civilian hospitals where I would work alongside civilian nurses.

The Military Treatment Facility where I worked last was at Bayne Jones Army Community Hospital (BJACH) on Fort Polk, Louisiana. This is a 22-bed Mixed Medical Surgical ward hospital. There are a total of 4 OB Beds and 4 Operating Room suites. There is an Emergency Room and an outpatient Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH). Most specialty services are outsourced to the surrounding civilian facilities. BJACH is one of the smaller hospitals in the Medical Health System (MHS) with very few medical and surgical services.

The MHS uses the MHS Quadruple Aim to represent and display the commitment to quality care to all of its healthcare members and serve to align with its strategic goals. Heath.mil (2017) explains that value proposition and the goals of the Quadruple aim are:

Readiness: Ensuring that the military personnel are mentally, physically and medically ready to deploy and defend the US and its Allies. The Military Medical staff are trained and ready to deliver health care anywhere, and at anytime, to include military operations and humanitarian missions.

Population Health: Provide education and prevention of illness that could prevent readiness. Encourage healthy behaviors and healthy choices and assist in the development of increased resilience.

Per Capita Cost: getting rid of waste reduction, focusing on quality care, cost of lifelong care, and avoiding change in services and care.

Experience of Care: Providing patient and family centered care that is safe, compassionate, equitable, at the highest quality, and convenient.

Experience per capita measures patient satisfaction using patient feedback in the form of survey questions. The questions focus on Access to Acute Care Appointments, Access to Routine Appointments, Care Transition, Cleanliness of Hospital Environment, Communication about Medicines, Communication with Doctors, and Communication with Nurses (Health.mil, n.d). Patient satisfaction is measured by Event-Based surveys and population surveys, which are collected as data. This Data is put into metrics which formulate a graph on a quarterly basis.

Metrics are important in healthcare be it private, community, or federal based facilities. The purpose of metrics is to focus attention on

Discussion Measurement Systems and Methods
Discussion Measurement Systems and Methods

what is important to translate the knowledge obtain into action. According to Stange, et. Al (2014), metrics can prompt us to think about the impact of the activities that are routine that needs “a looking into.” It allows the organization to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of the patient’s experience and guide the course for change in how care is delivered. Campbell, et.al (2009) purports that metrics serves three functions: performance assessment, highlight processes and outcomes, and allows reflection on purpose and goals of the organization.

Overall, BJACH is doing well for a small hospital. The PCMH has done an outstanding job in Patient’s satisfaction and meeting the goals of the Commander and the MHS. In an article written by the Fort Polk Public Affairs Office, “for three out of the last four months, Bayne-Jones Army Community Hospital has been No. 1 in overall patient satisfaction for the entire Regional Health Command — Central, as a result of beneficiary responses from the Joint Outpatient Experience Survey (BJACH Staff, 2019).

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References:

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d).ACTS Supports the Quadruple Aim Retrieved from https://digital.ahrq.gov/acts/quadruple-aim

Campbell, SM., Reeves, D., Kontopantelis, E., Sibbald, B. & Roland M. 2009. Effects of pay for performance on the quality of primary care in England. N. Engl. J. Med 361:368–78

Helath.mil. (n.d). Clinical Quality Measures. Retrieved from https://health.mil/Military-Health-Topics/Access-Cost-Quality-and-Safety/Quality-And-Safety-of-Healthcare/Clinical-Quality-Management/Clinical-Quality-Measures

Stiefel, M. & Nolan K. (2012). A Guide to Measuring the Triple Aim: Population Health, Experience of Care, and Per Capita Cost. IHI Innovation Series white paper. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Stange, K. C., Etz, R. S., Gullett, H., Sweeney, S. A., Miller, W. L., Jaén, C. R., Crabtree, B. F., Nutting, P. A., & Glasgow, R. E. (2014). Metrics for assessing improvements in primary health care. Annual review of public health, 35, 423–442. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182438

United States Army JRTC and Fort Polk. (March, 15,2019). BJACH Ranks NO.1 in Region for Patient Satisfaction. Retrieved from HTTP://home.army.mil/polk/index.php/about/garrison-directorates-and-support-offices/public-affairs/design-test-page/news/news-you-can-use/bjach-ranks-no-1-region-patient-satisfaction

Sample Answer 2 for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

As a home care nurse and now a home care nurse practitioner, we utilize the Home Health Care Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HHCAHPS) Survey, which is used to assess and publicly report the perspectives of the patients that utilized a home health care service (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2020).   The National Quality Forum endorsed the survey in March 2009 (CDC, 2020) and HHCAHPS approved vendors are tasked with conducting the survey for the home care agencies (CDC, 2020). The HHCAHPS is completed by the patient or a proxy and comprises 34-item questions that measure the patient’s perception of the skilled home care they received (CDC, 2020). The questions covered in the survey include pain, care, prescription medication, communication about scheduling, and their overall rating of the home care agency (CDC, 2020). The results of the HHCAHPS are publicly reported and can be viewed on the Medicare website.

Home health ratings are essential to a home care agency as potential patients tend to search up agency profiles to determine if they would utilize their service. A Medicare home health rating offers an official source of the quality of care provided by a skilled agency and can be the difference between patients choosing one agency over another. A home health star rating summarizes an agency’s performance and compares them to other agencies so that potential patients can make a choice (CDC, 2021). The star ratings are calculated based on data analysis and stakeholder input (CDC, 2021). There are two types of star ratings: Quality of Patient Care Star Ratings and Patient Survey Star Ratings (CDC, 2021). The Quality of Patient Care (QoPC) Star Rating is based on Medicare claims data, and the oasis assessments and the patient survey star rating are based on the Home Health CAHPS (CDC, 2021).

All Medicare-certified HHAs may potentially receive a Quality of Patient Care Star Rating. HHAs must have data for at least 20 complete quality episodes for each measure to be reported on Care Compare. Completed episodes are paired with start or resumption of care and end of care OASIS assessments. Episodes must have an end-of-care date within the 12-month reporting period regardless of the start date. To have a Quality of Patient Care Star Rating computed, HHAs must have reported data for 5 of the seven measures used in the quality of the patient care star rating calculation. The current methodology for calculating the Quality of Patient Care Star Rating can be accessed via the Downloads section below. This methodology will be updated periodically as additional refinements are made.

The Quality of Patient Star Rating measures seven key points, including improvement in ambulation (outcome measure), timely initiation of care (process measure), improvement in bed transferring (outcome measure), improvement in bathing (outcome measure), improvement in the management of oral medications (outcome measure), improvement in shortness of breath (outcome measure) and acute care hospitalization (claims-based) (outcome measure) (CDC, 2021). A Medicare-certified home health agency must have returned at least 40 surveys to be eligible to get a star rating. During meetings at our agency, when I was a case manager, we would be tasked to remind our patients to return/mail back their completed surveys as one of the issues with this type of survey is that patients do not fill or mail them back. Ratings are discussed, and our weaknesses are focused on as places to improve upon to ensure that the following survey is better.

 

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2020). Home Health CAHPS (HHCAHPS)

https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Research/CAHPS/HHCAHPS

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021). Home Health Star ratings.

https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/HHQIHomeHealthStarRatings

 

Sample Answer 3 for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

The post is informative and interesting to read. However, I am surprised that your current work environment of air medical transport does not track the patient’s experience. Essentially, understanding patient experience is a major step in achieving patient-centered care. By considering different aspects of patient experience enables health care organizations to assess the level to which patients are given responsive and respectful care based on individual patient’s values, preferences, and needs (Larson et al., 2019). Therefore, it is imperative for your current environment to consider assessing patient experience together with other vital elements such as safety and effectiveness of care, which are critical in providing a full picture of quality of health care. As such, the organization can reintroduce standardized surveys to track patient experience (Zhang et al., 2020). In particular, the previously used CAHPS surveys program should be brought back. CAHPS surveys program is critical tool requests the patients to report the elements of their experience that are essential to them rather than asking them how satisfied they are with the care. The survey contains well-tested questions using reliable methodology which is essential in producing validated and standardized patient experience measures (Martino et al., 2017).

References

Larson, E., Sharma, J., Bohren, M. A., & Tunçalp, Ö. (2019). When the patient is the expert: measuring patient experience and satisfaction with care. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 97(8), 563. doi: 10.2471/BLT.18.225201

Martino, S. C., Shaller, D., Schlesinger, M., Parker, A. M., Rybowski, L., Grob, R., … & Finucane, M. L. (2017). CAHPS and comments: how closed-ended survey questions and narrative accounts interact in the assessment of patient experience. Journal of patient experience, 4(1), 37-45. doi: 10.1177/2374373516685940

Zhang, Y., Li, Q., & Liu, H. (2020). From patient satisfaction to patient experience: A call to action for nursing in China. Journal of nursing management, 28(2), 450-456. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12922

Sample Answer 4 for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

The healthcare organization I selected is the new Baptist Hospital in Brent Lane, Pensacola, FL.  We have recently moved hospitals (September 2023), so the building is new.  We use scorecards and dashboards in which patient experience and care are measured, tracked, and used to set improvement goals.  HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) then tells us whether we are at par with the other hospitals in the area.  HCAHPS is the first national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patients’ perspectives on hospital care (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2020).

Star ratings reflect HCAHPS surveys completed from July 2014 through June 2015, released on May 4, 2016.  According to the President and CEO of Baptist Health Care, patient satisfaction is reviewed monthly to ensure we stay on top of our performance expectations.  The ratings are based on 11 publicly reported measures in the HCAHPS survey (Baptist Health Care, 2023).  The DNV recently surveyed our hospital, and we were told we passed with flying colors.  On my floor, we measure performance according to our numbers of patient falls, hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPI), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), and central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI).

It is important to score low in these nurse-sensitive indicators as they can also impact hospital-wide scores.  The impact of not meeting these metrics for my healthcare organization can be disastrous.  “What we had previously assumed to be consistently high-quality care was now revealed to be frequently unreliable and inadequate in meeting patient needs” (Nash et al., 2019, p. 233) until the publication of To Err Is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm.  As the healthcare system is now moving away from fee for volume of services to fee for patient-centered care or services, the surveys are defined by what actually happens from the source of that information: the patients.

References:

Baptist Health Care (2023). Baptist Health Care Hospitals Score High, Gulf Breeze Hospital earns perfect five-star rating in latest CMS Hospital Compare Website Update. Baptist Health Care | eBaptistHealthCare.org. https://www.ebaptisthealthcare.org/news/baptist-health-care-hospitals-score-high-gulf-breeze-hospital-earns-perfect-five-star-rating-in-latest-cms-hospital-compare-website-update

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (2020). HCAHPS: Patients’ perspectives of care surveyLinks to an external site.Links to an external site.. https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HospitalQualityInits/HospitalHCAHPS

Nash, D. B., Joshi, M. S., Ransom, E. R., & Ransom, S. B. (Eds.). (2019). The healthcare quality book: Vision, strategy, and tools (4th ed.). Health Administration Press.

Sample Answer 5 for Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

Great post. It is interesting to learn about your organization, the new location, and its use of scorecards and dashboards. Such measurement systems allow healthcare organizations and providers to keep track of their care provision processes to identify success areas and practice gaps for quality improvement for the sake of promoting care outcomes for patients (Amer et al., 2020). Your organization is doing a good job carrying out evidence-based practice by comparing the scores from the measurement systems and methods with those of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). Such a comparison ensures that healthcare organizations are operating at par and that improvement goals are in line with the standards of governmental and leading healthcare institutions and organizations, which are based on reliable and credible research and experience.

Your organization’s review of patient satisfaction every month is timely and indeed, is a way of ensuring it attains its performance expectations. Furthermore, the use of patient falls, hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPI), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), and central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABI) as measures by your organization are meaningful. Indeed, failing to meet the set goals can be catastrophic. In this case, it is the patients, the healthcare organization, and the healthcare system in general that suffer the adverse consequences. The failure to reach the set metrics means that a healthcare facility is falling short in its provision of quality services and undermining patient care outcomes. Such organizations should take advantage of measurement systems and metrics to track performance and identify practice gaps for quality improvement.

References

Amer, F., Hammoud, S., Khatatbeh, H., Lohner, S., Boncz, I., & Endrei, D. (2022). The deployment of balanced scorecard in health care organizations: is it beneficial? A systematic review. BMC health services research, 22(1), 1-14.