Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation

Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation

Capella University Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation-Step-By-Step Guide

 

This guide will demonstrate how to complete the Capella University Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  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 Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  

 

Whether one passes or fails an academic assignment such as the Capella University Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  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 Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  

The introduction for the Capella University Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  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 Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  

 

After the introduction, move into the main part of the Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  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 Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  

 

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 Assessment 1: Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation  

 

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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Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation

In everyday health practice, health care practitioners and organizations work to achieve a set target. They commit their energy and resources to meet the desired levels of care quality and patient safety as legally, ethically and professionally required. To achieve the desired outcomes, health care providers are guided by performance benchmarks. From a health care perspective, dashboards serve as the most reliable analytic tools for monitoring key performance indicators. They contain metrics that enable health care providers to access crucial patient statistics and intervene approximately as areas of underperformance obligate. Based on the dashboard data for substance use disorder (SUD) at an emergency room (ER), this paper explains the implications of underperformance in key areas and the role of stakeholders in performance improvement.

Dashboard Metrics for CareM Medical Center (ER): Last quarter 2019

Area of Performance	Status	Target	Compliance Percentage
SUD screening	450	400	100%
Waiting hour average	80 minutes	40 minutes	50%
Motivational interviewing for SUD	180	150	100%
Number of beds	10	20	50%
Nurse: patient ratio	1:5	1:4	80%

Hospital overview: CareM Medical Center is located in Bakersfield, California. Operating majorly in an under-resourced setting, the facility targets low-income earners. For a while, substance use disorder (SUD) has been a key focus area in the center’s emergency room. The data indicates areas of underperformance, implying that interventions are necessary to change the described state.

Evaluation: Metrics not Meeting Organizational Benchmark

Health care organizations must meet benchmarks set by local, state, or federal health care laws or policies. The targets indicated on the dashboard are quality performance standards that CareM Medical Center should strive to meet consistently. Based on this data, the metrics not meeting the benchmark include SUD screening, waiting hour average, number of beds, and nurse to patient ratio. It is a genuine concern considering the areas affected critically affect patient outcomes.

Health Care Policies Establishing the Benchmarks

Located in Bakersfield, CareM Medical Center is primarily regulated by California laws. The number of

patients served daily, referrals, and emergency care should follow California health law. It is also crucial to consider what federal policies recommend about the stated benchmark metrics. The average waiting time in an emergency room (ER) is forty minutes. The other area governed by law is the nurse to patient ratio in the ER. California recommends a ratio of 1:4 (Dembosky, 2020). The number of beds should be adequate to prevent overcrowding. From this evaluation, attention should shift to practices that can reduce waiting time in the ER. However, the evaluation could have been better if there was data to compare progress over time. For instance, data in the other three quarters in 2019 can help examine the progress to ascertain whether attention should be on reducing waiting time to meet the federal recommendations or other areas.

Challenges Associated with Meeting Prescribed Benchmarks

Meeting the prescribed benchmarks is always challenging from an organizational perspective. To ensure that patients are adequately served, health care providers and medical equipment must be sufficient. Interprofessional collaboration should be high enabled by modern health technologies, among other means. To achieve this, health care organizations must look for the necessary resources to address current and emerging needs. They are forced to search for operational and capital funding and invest resources to get the required financial resources. Support services must be plenty too. Since health care organizations are not investment-oriented, the inadequacy of resources usually hinders them from serving patients and the community as their strategic missions envisage.

Financial and operational challenges are central to the underperformance seen in staffing. For health care organizations to have the required number of health care providers, adequate financial resources are vital. Processes such as recruitment, motivation, and performance appraisal depend on financial resources. Salaries for the extra workforce and facilities such as accommodation are money-based. Accordingly, the nurse: patient ratio will depend on the organization’s resources to a considerable extent. Based on CareM’s setting, the nurse-patient ratio of 1:5 is sensible, albeit the need for improvement.

Benchmark with Great Impacts on Overall Performance

From the highlighted underperformance areas, the nurse: patient ratio in the ER can significantly improve overall performance. Nurse: patient ratio affects nurses’ productivity since it can deter their motivation and ability to work due to heavy workload if the ratio is too high (Gutsan et al., 2018). Overworking as nurses try to achieve the set benchmarks leads to nurse burnout. The nurse: patient ratio in the ER determines how nurses approach routine care without making medication errors. Handling a manageable number of patients allows nurses to work on patients quickly and avoid overcrowding in emergency rooms (Hawk & D’Onofrio, 2018). If not overwhelmed, nurses would also be better positioned to liaise with outside physicians to determine whether patients require emergency visits accurately.

Benchmark of Interest: Average Waiting Hour

Together with the number of beds, the average waiting hour is the benchmark I chose for improvement. In the medical center, the average waiting time is eighty minutes, double the allowable average of forty minutes. A review of the causes of high waiting time in emergency rooms revealed that beds’ inadequacy is a leading cause. The other reason is that medical facilities do not give outside physicians the privilege to admit patients, making ER visits higher than usual. Unless the issue of referrals is addressed, the situation is unlikely to change soonest to improve health outcomes.

Regarding the benchmark underperformance that is most widespread throughout the organization, the inadequate number of beds deserves a lot of attention. It is more of an administrative problem than a policy issue. A low number of beds implies that SUD patients cannot be released for admission and pave the way to screen other patients since they must stay in beds. Accordingly, this problem becomes the most impacting on patients and staff. To patients, the waiting time increases, risking their health further. It can be a source of demotivation to serve for nurses since the number waiting to be served is proportional to the waiting time.

Impacts of Underperformance on the Community

Ethically and professionally, health care organizations are mandated to provide excellent quality care and prioritize patient safety. High waiting time is a disservice to the community served and violates the principle of health care equity. According to Reese (2019), high waiting time in emergency rooms affects the health of millions of Americans yearly, and many usually leave health care facilities without attendance or partially attended.  This disservice is also a leading cause of more extended hospital stays since the chances of health complications as patients wait to be served are high. High waiting time increases medical errors and patients’ death rates (Martinez et al., 2019). As a result, the community health is affected adversely, and attention to enhance performance is necessary.

Opportunity to Improve the Overall Quality of Care

CareM Medical Center can prevent risking patients’ lives by addressing the issue of high waiting time. In the current setup, the best way to lower waiting is to ensure that the ER has adequate beds to accommodate more patients as they receive SUD services. If possible, administrative interventions to increase the number of registered nurses to match the State’s threshold are crucial. Doing so will ensure that nurses are more empowered and supported to serve patients irrespective of the increasing numbers.

Ethical Action

Health care facilities operate as they follow administrative and legal policies. Internal and external policies guide them, and violation of the set policies has severe legal and ethical implications. In the current setup at CareM Medical Center, a huge portion of the patients visiting the emergency room are referred by outside physicians. They (outside physicians) refer many patients to the ER since they are not professionally mandated to provide complete SUD care. Outside physicians lack admitting privileges. They cannot admit a patient directly, implying that almost all the medical center’s admissions come through the ER. Accordingly, it is crucial to increase outside physicians admitting privileges to reduce unnecessary visits to the ER. Visits to the ER should be reserved for critically ill patients.

Responsible Stakeholders

Stakeholders play a critical role in the running of health care facilities. Their decisions have huge implications on how an organization functions and policies made every day. To improve waiting time at CareM Medical Center, the best-positioned group of stakeholders is the quality service board. The board consists of the facility’s administration, and patients, community, and legal representatives. Its work is quality assurance and searching for resources to enhance performance, particularly donation. The board is also responsible for policy formulation to ensure that services meet the expected quality standards.

Importance of Action

Always, health care facilities should be concerned when their services fail to meet the desired benchmark. Underperformance has huge implications on the quality of care and patient safety, and interventions to match the legally and ethically set standards are imperative. When facilitated to serve, nurses will also be motivated to offer their services, and the chances of burnout will reduce. CareM Medical Center will also be safe from legal violations. Such interventions will enable the facility to continue serving the community diligently as its mission statement envisages.

Supporting Improved Benchmark Performance

The stakeholder group can apply several strategies to support improved benchmark performance. It can improve interprofessional collaboration between outside physicians and the ER nurses to prevent unnecessary ER visits. When outside physicians and ER nurses collaborate to assess a patient, physicians would be more empowered to admit patients directly without an ER visit. However, such a change in the work structure needs some policy formulations to advance the role of outside physicians that is somewhat limited.

In conclusion, quality health delivery is challenging when a health care facility is underperforming in some areas. Dashboard metrics are reliable reference points to determine whether a health care facility performs as the local, state, or federal laws obligate. CareM Medical Center’s close assessment shows that it needs to improve on nurse: patient ratio, average waiting hours, and the number of beds in the ER. Policy and administrative interventions to change the current state include giving outside physicians more admission privileges, increasing the number of nurses, and looking for financial resources to buy more beds in the emergency room.

 

 

References

Dembosky, A. (2020, Dec 30). California is overriding its limits on nurse workloads as COVID-19 surges. npr. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/30/950177471/california-is-overriding-its-limits-on-nurse-workloads-as-covid-19-surges

Gutsan, E., Patton, J., Willis, W. K., & PH, C. D. (2018). Burnout syndrome and nurse-to-patient ratio in the workplace. Marshall University. https://mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1196&context=mgmt_faculty

Hawk, K., & D’Onofrio, G. (2018). Emergency department screening and interventions for substance use disorders. Addiction science & clinical practice, 13(1), 1-6. https://ascpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13722-018-0117-1

Martinez, D. A., Zhang, H., Bastias, M., Feijoo, F., Hinson, J., Martinez, R., … & Prieto, D. (2019). Prolonged wait time is associated with increased mortality for Chilean waiting list patients with non-prioritized conditions. BMC public health, 19(1), 1-11. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-6526-6

Reese, P. (2019, May 17). As ER wait times grow, more patients leave against medical advice. KHN. https://khn.org/news/as-er-wait-times-grow-more-patients-leave-against-medical-advice/

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Lopes Write Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to Lopes Write, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.

Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.

Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?

Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource