Discuss the access, cost, and quality of quality environments, as well as recent quality initiatives (See Chapter 24 and Table 24.1). Student is to reflect on the relationship between quality measures and evaluation and role development. In addition, describe this relationship and note how the role of the APN might change without effective quality measures.

Question

Dan Palmer · Accepted Answer

Nursing professionals play critical role when it comes to the delivery of care, and for patients to receive optimal benefits from the nursing care, nurses have to be competent. This is because the nurse’s competency determines the quality of the clinical services they provide, and it can influence the costs of the medical care. Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) contribute to the advancement of the health care objectives pertaining to access, cost and quality of care. The healthcare priorities, and patients’ needs are changing, and the APRNs have to find new ways of addressing health concerns.  For instance, they can adapt to the new trends by leveraging evidence and technology to promote wellness and prevent illness. The APRNs, when performing their professional duties, have to adopt cost-effective measures (Joel, 2018). By doing this, they can contribute to a healthcare environment that emphasizes quality, access and cost-effectiveness. However, the quality environments can affect APRN’s role as explored in this study.  Access, Cost and Quality of Quality Environment  There have been sustained efforts to transform the United States’ healthcare, and most of these efforts have often focused on key elements which include access, cost, and quality of care. According to (Joel, 2018), these elements are the cornerstones for the delivery of health care, and they have different meanings. Access, for example, means being able to use personal health care in the right time to attain wellness. Conversely, quality takes into account the aspects such as the patient’s needs, and the affordability, effectiveness and safety of care.  Costs entails the amount charged by the providers to deliver care, and it is determined by the nature of the patient’s illness, and the resources used to treat it. The quality environment affects all the aforementioned elements, and it encompasses the systems or programs focused on optimizing the quality of care, mitigating costs, and improving access (Joel, 2018). Quality measures, for instance, can be used to build an environment that encourages the delivery of safe care.  The environment in which an APRN works determines the quality of medical services they provide. For nurses, working in a conducive practice setting, can lead to motivation, and improve their productivity. This kind of environment is characterized by higher levels of job satisfaction, low turnover rates, and reduced burnout. The quality of nursing can equally improve in such a workplace scenario. Retention of nurses means a health facility will have more nurses with experience and knowledge of managing clinical issues.  This in turn will lead to better care. If a clinical facility were to experience high turnover rates, this would culminate to watering down of the quality, and it can jeopardize the safety of care (Harrison, 2015). This emphasizes the importance of creating conditions which encourage the delivery of medical services, and by creating these conditions, providers will be seen as leading efforts aimed at the delivery of compassionate care (Harrison, 2015).  Quality improvement, within the clinical context, entails a methodical process in which the hospital monitors, assesses and improves the health care safety and effectiveness. It is a continuous process that involves review of the implemented strategies or ideas, and making changes as well as pursuing measures focused on optimizing performance. When an organization continuously upgrades and improves the processes and operations, it can experience growth in terms of services it provides, and the models of care it adopts to help provide care.  For example, the upgrade can encourage an organizational culture in which employees use evidence-based practice (EBP). Patient satisfaction go hand in hand with quality considering that the fulfillment of the patients’ needs can lead to the patient being satisfied (MacDorman et al., 2016). To optimize quality, and achieve higher levels of client satisfaction, providers can use ethical principle to guide their actions. Examples include the beneficence and Nonmaleficence.  Recent Quality Initiatives  Recent quality initiatives emphasize the delivery of safe care in a timely manner, and APRNs play critical role in terms of advancing quality initiatives. The use of health technology to guide decision-making is an example of such initiatives, and hospitals are using various informatics systems to perform this task. Providers are leveraging the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for this particular role. The use of evidence-based practice (EBP) is another initiative that hospitals are continuously adopting.  This initiative focuses on using the available research results to inform providers’ clinical decisions. The APRNs’ role fit into these quality initiatives considering that these nurses are at the forefront when it comes to the adoption and implementation of the technology. This is particularly noticeable where they play leadership roles, and they have to come up with solutions to the issues such as the delivery of unsafe care, prolonged hospitalization, and high rates of hospitalization (Boafo, 2018).  Relationship between Quality Measures and Evaluation  Providers can gauge the quality of the care they provide, and when measuring quality, they can either use various metrics including the way the patient perceives health services, the outcomes of the clinical intervention and the met guidelines. Other metrics include reduction in the time of hospitalization, and the structures within the organization.  For instance, one can measure quality by determining the provider-patient ratio. Evaluation is important in the sense that it helps one know whether the quality metrics have been mate.  When evaluating these metrics, a healthcare organization can use various methods including interviews, and peer reviews. They can also observe the way the metrics or the measures for measuring quality change. If an organization wants to reduce the rates of nosocomial infections by one year, for example, it would use the costs incurred in treating infections to measure quality (Bhatt & Bathija, 2018). To use this particular measure to evaluate perform, the organization would examine expenditures at different points such as after every three months.  Relationship between Quality Measures and Role Development  There is a link between the quality measures, and the role development for the APRNs. Quality measures and evaluation is an ongoing process in which nursing professionals play crucial role. They are involved in coming up with the criteria for measuring outcomes, and they participate in activities such as patient care, and utilization of evidence to make decisions regarding patient care. APRNs set practice goals which they want to achieve, and as they work with patients, they evaluate how well their interventions are working.  They also use the outcomes to measure their experience and performance. Nurses have to gain experience for them to assume advanced roles, and they can gain this experience by being aware of their accomplishments concerning using clinical interventions to meet patients’ health needs.  APRNs can conduct patient assessment, prepare evidence to be used in reviewing the success of treatments, and be a preceptor (Lunenfeld et al., 2015). Through the development of their roles, they contribute to the measurement of quality outcomes.  How the Role of the APN might change without Effective Quality Measures  The APRNs have various responsibilities and they perform different clinical duties. For example, they facilitate EBP, employ strategies that optimize clinical outcomes, and they ensure constant quality improvement. They equally work with patients who require acute care, and those who are in need of critical care, and they perform other duties such as implementation of initiatives which prevent patient suffering.  When an organization wants to establish policy guidelines which address quality, it may seek the views of the APRNs, and through their roles and duties, they can contribute to lowering the rates of re-hospitalization, prevent the deterioration of the patient’s health, and improve the overall wellbeing of those they are caring for (Eckardt et al., 2017). Thus, the APRNs play vital role in the healthcare setup.  While the APN’s role is core to the advancement of the clinical objectives, APN’s capacity to fully improve the patient’s experience of care depends on the availability of the effective quality measures. The lack of these kind of measures can hamper APN’s capacity to contribute to quality improvement. One of the key issues which may stem from the lack of the quality measures is the lack of guidelines to direct APN’s decisions.  When an APN does not have resources or the guidelines to implement change, this can have negative impact in terms of what they can accomplish. When an organization has quality measures in place, it allocates resources and materials to help with the execution of such measures (Sutton et al., 2020). The Lack of such measures means APN cannot get the resources or materials they need to improve quality.  Recommendations and Suggestions  The quality of the environment in which nurses operate can influence the costs and quality of care, and affect access to care. The hospital, in a bid to establish this kind of environment, should set goals on what it wants to achieve, and communicate these goals to the staff. Doing this will help everyone including APNs to understand organizational expectations, and work towards meeting these expectations. The hospital should constantly review quality measures and assess whether employees are complying with the existing guidelines. This should be accompanied by undertaking measures to seal the quality loopholes.

[ANSWERED] Discuss the access, cost, and quality of quality environments, as well as recent quality initiatives (See Chapter 24 and Table 24.1). Student is to reflect on the relationship between

Discuss the access, cost, and quality of quality environments, as well as recent quality initiatives (See Chapter 24 and Table 24.1)

Expert Answer and Explanation

Access, Cost, and Quality for APNs

Other Assignments Relating to this Class:

Week 1: Introduction

Week 1: Discussion Question 1 – The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health

Week 1: Discussion Question 2 – Applying Jean Watson’s Theory on Human Caring/Caring Science Core Principles to APN Practice

Week 1: Quiz

Week 1: Assignment – Plagiarism Certificate

Week 2: Discussion Question 1 – Applying Leadership Skills in Exploring the Roles for APRN

Week 2: Discussion Question 2 – The Impact of Healthcare Trends on the APN Roles

Week 2: Quiz

Week 2: Assignment – Virtual Class with Librarian

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