Access the following website: WhyNotTheBest.org.
**Select a minimum of 3 hospitals (from the left menu box Compare Hospitals)
in your home state and at 3 hospitals in least 2-3 other states in order to make comparisons. It is recommended that your choice of the other 2-3 states be states that have similar characteristics (i.e. demographics or population) as your home
state.
**Once the list appears based on your selected state (under the matching hospitals
menu), click on the arrow icon next to the hospital to add them to the box on the right (add to report). Do not leave this page until all of your hospitals and states have been selected. Your choices will not be saved. Look back to the left
menu box and select your next state and hospitals until all of your choices have
been selected.
*Once all selections have been made, click on “View Report You must click on
the site terms of agreement in order to proceed. You will also need to give your
report a name. Any name will suffice. Click on “View Report again. You may
get a popup menu that asks again for the agreement to the terms of use. Please read this information. It also illustrates how to cite your report. You will need this citation information for the reference page of your report.
**Your report will be displayed. Click on the “change category link in order to produce reports on the following characteristics:
Patient Experience
Mortality Rates
Readmission Rates
Health Information Technology
o It is recommended that you print the chart reports from each category. If you
desire, you can create a free account to save your reports. However, if you do not
create the account before you do the report, you will lose your report. It may be
more feasible just to print out your reports.
**After reviewing the reports from each state, students will develop a comparative
analysis paper. The paper will explore the four (4) required areas of comparison; describe the findings, and present ideas for improving the data findings. Format for the paper:
Title page
Introduction This section of the paper should describe the states selected and rationale for their selection.
Comparative AnalysisThis discussion should give a narrative of the results
of the comparisons for each state based on the specified characteristics.
Reflections “ Discuss your personal and professional reflections on the
findings. (What do you think about the results? How might you explain any
differences?) This discussion should be supported by references from the
assigned readings and external sources.
Conclusions
Discuss how the selected hospitals might improve their scores
on each of the characteristics.
Christian Worldview – This section of the paper should also address how your Christian worldview perspective impacts or frames your ideas and discussions related to the issues presented in the paper.
Reference page – APA format.
Current Issues and Trends
Names
Institution
Date
Current Issues and Trends
Introduction
This paper will provide an analysis of three hospitals from different states, which have been compared against each other to understand their performance scores. The report will compare the hospitals based on the reports derived from different categories such as patient experience, emergency care, immunization rates, timely and effective stroke care, and blood clot prevention and treatment. The three hospitals that will be compared against each other are Baptist Memorial Hospital in Tennessee, Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center in Arizona, and Coastal Carolina Medical Center in South Carolina. The rationale for the choice of the three states was based on their population ranges. Tennessee is the 36th largest state by area with an approximated population of 6,910, 840. South Carolina is the 40th most expansive state with an estimated population of 5, 124, 712. Arizona is the third state chosen with an estimated population of 7,151, 502. It is also the 6th largest state and 14th most populous.
Comparative Analysis
Patient Experience (HCAHPS)
Patient experience is the first category for comparison. Baptist Memorial Care Hospital (TN) has a score of 68 percent on the percentage of the highly satisfied patients, which is the highest among the three hospitals, Carondelet St Joseph’s Hospital, and Health Center (AZ) has a score of 65 percent while Coastal Carolina Medical Center has a score of 65 percent. The second measure of doctor communication indicates that Baptist Memorial Care Hospital has the highest score of 77 percent followed by Coastal Carolina Medical Center with 76 percent and lastly Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Medical Center with 73 percent. The third measure of nurse communication shows that both Baptist Memorial Care Hospital and Coastal Carolina Medical Center scored similar percentages of 76 while Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center score 73 percent. The fourth measure of patients receiving help as soon as they wanted indicates that Coastal Carolina Medical Center tops the list at 66 percent, followed by Carondelet St Josephs and Health Center with 61 percent, and lastly Baptist Memorial Care Hospital with 54 percent.
The sixth measure about the staff explaining medicines Coastal Carolina Medical Center tops the list at 62 percent followed by Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center at 61 percent and lastly by Baptist Memorial Care Hospital with 56 percent. The seventh measure concerns patient pain control where Baptist Memorial Care Hospital and Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center score the same at 67 percent while Coastal Carolina Medical Center has a score of 65 percent. The seventh measure is about keeping the patient’s room quiet at night where the Baptist Memorial Care Hospital scores the highest at 60 percent, followed by Coastal Carolina Medical Center at 51 percent, and lastly Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center at 48 percent. The eighth measure entails keeping the patient’s room and bathroom clean where the top scorer is Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center at 73 percent followed by Coastal Carolina Medical Center at 64 percent and lastly Baptist Memorial Care Hospital at 61 percent. The ninth measure about giving the patient information concerning home recovery shows Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center and Coastal Carolina Medical Center scoring the same scores of 87 percent while Baptist Memorial Care Hospital scores 81 percent. The tenth measure of the patient recommending the facility shows that the top scorer is Baptist Memorial Care Hospital with 69 percent, followed by Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center with 68 percent, and lastly by Coastal Carolina Medical Center with 63 percent. The last measure of patients agreeing to have understood care has very low scores with Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center scoring 50 percent, while Carondelet’s St Josephs Hospital and Health Center and Coastal Carolina Medical Center scoring 47 percent each.
Readmission Rates
The second category is the readmission rate. The first measure is hospital-wide unplanned 30-day unplanned readmission where the Baptist Memorial Care hospital has the highest score of 15.9 percent followed by Coastal Carolina Medical Center with 15.6 percent and lastly Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center at 14.9 percent. The second measure is about heart attack patients being readmitted to hospitals where Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center has a higher rate of 15.10 percent as compared to Baptist Memorial Care hospital with 15 percent. There are no results for Coastal Carolina Medical Center. The third measure is about heart failure in patients readmitted to the hospital. Coastal Carolina Medical center has the highest score of 25.2 percent, followed by Baptist Memorial Care Hospital while Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center has the lowest score of 18.9 percent.
The fourth measure is about pneumonia patients readmitted to the hospital. The hospital with the highest score is Baptist Memorial Care Hospital with a score of 18.1 percent, followed by Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center with a score of 15.7 percent while the hospital with the least score is Coastal Carolina Medical Center with 15.3 percent. The fourth measure is about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease where Baptist Memorial Care Hospital has a score of 20.20, Carondelet St Josephs Hospital, Health Center has a score of 19.7 percent, and Coastal Carolina Medical Center has a score of 20 percent. The fourth measure is about stroke 30-day readmission rate where Baptist Memorial Hospital has the highest score of 13.4 percent followed by Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center with 11.9 percent and lastly Coastal Carolina Medical Center with 11.1 percent.
Mortality Rates
The third category is mortality rates. The mortality composite among the three hospitals is highest is Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center at 14.15 percent, followed by the Carondelet St Josephs Hospital at 14.2 percent and Health Center at 14.15 and the third is Baptist Memorial Care Hospital with 12.3 percent. The second measure is heart attack 30-day mortality rate with Baptist Memorial Care Hospital having the highest rate at 13.9 percent, followed by Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center at 13.2 percent. There are no results for the Coastal Carolina Medical Center. The third measure is heart failure 30-day mortality rate where the Baptist Memorial Care Hospital has a 10.4 percent rate, followed by Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center at 12.9 percent while Coastal Carolina Medical Center has 11.0 percent.
The fifth category shows a pneumonia 30-day mortality rate of 3.3 in the Baptist Memorial Care Hospital, Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center has 17.2 percent while Coastal Carolina Medical Center has 8.6 percent. The fifth measure is about the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with the mortality rates being at 7.4 percent in Baptist Memorial care, 11.5 percent at Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center, and 8.6 percent at Coastal Carolina Medical Center. The sixth measure in acute Ischemic stroke -30 day mortality rates where Baptist Memorial Care Hospital has 14.3 percent, Carondelet St Josephs Hospital and Health Center has 16.4 percent while Coastal Carolina Medical Center has 12.9 percent.
Health Information Technology
The fourth category that the analysis will look into is health information technology. The three hospitals can receive laboratory results electronically as well as the ability to track clinical results between visits.
Reflections
The four categories analyzed above (mortality rates, health information technology, readmission rates, and patient experiences) are significant determinants of the quality of care provided in the hospital settings and overall safety and hospital environment. Patient experiences, readmission rates, and mortality rates are nurse-sensitive indicators that hospitals can adopt as reliable tools for improving the quality of clinical practice, nursing care quality, and decision-making practices (Oner et al., 2020; Afaneh et al., 2021). The results are averagely satisfactory and show the need for some improvements and changes in the various hospitals to improve patient experience and lower the cost of care. The hospitals should adopt frameworks that would facilitate change at different levels such as management, culture and overall perceptions, and the attitudes of the healthcare professionals. It would be vital to note that poor health outcomes especially those linked to hospital readmissions increase the cost of care and burden of disease not only on the patient and family but also on the hospital systems. The differences in findings among the three hospitals could be attributed to a myriad of factors including organizational management, culture, policies, the availability of resources, and characteristics of the hospital staff, which are likely to be unique for the three hospitals analyzed.
The results indicate a lapse in various areas of healthcare administration resulting in high rates of hospital readmissions, mortality rates, as well as poor ratings on the patient experiences with the hospitals. Organizational management determines the culture, policies, and overall environment in the hospital. For example, hospital readmission rates could directly be linked to the process of care at the hospital level. Inadequate hospital resources and facilities such as lack of the state of the art of clinical equipment and even inadequate staffing could directly affect the nursing process hence making the patients suffering from illnesses such as pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease vulnerable to readmissions. Hospital readmissions have been linked to higher rates of hospital mortality as well as overutilization of hospital resources (Upadhyay et al., 2019).
The results indicate some level of poor healthcare quality and safety in the hospitals as indicated by the parameters outlined above of patient experiences, hospital readmissions, and mortality rates. Patient safety is one of the fundamental goals of healthcare. Both healthcare quality and safety are crucial determinants of patient outcomes and can be directly linked to the overall care process. Healthcare quality entails the provision of safe and effective care indicated by the attainment of optimal health among the patients (Allen-Duck et al., 2017). Patient safety not only involves the clinicians who provide direct care to the patients but also the managers at micro and macro levels who make and recommend policies that determine healthcare delivery (Shenoy, 2021). The Institute of Medicine provides six aims for the improvement models, which are safe care, efficient care, effective care, patient-centered care, timely care, and equitable care.
Conclusions
Based on the findings derived from the report, the three hospitals can make some changes and improvements in different areas to improve the scores in the three characteristics discussed (mortality rates, hospital readmission rates, and patients’ experiences). Hospital mortality rates can be minimized by the adoption of interventions especially those that touch on the direct care provided by the clinicians. The hospitals can adopt interventions such as the use of an early warning scoring system, the use of daily ambulatory clinics among the geriatric patients, the use of more experienced nurses in the acute areas of the hospitals, and the development of an electronic process allowing for the review of the mortality rates (Tiwari et al., 2020). Another strategy would be to disseminate learning from the patient’s deaths.
The hospitals can sensitize the healthcare workers on the importance of improved interactions with the patients to increase satisfaction and create a conducive environment for recovery (Grocott & McSherry, 2018). The hospitals can educate the nurses on interpersonal and communication skills to improve interactions between the hospital staff and the patients. For example, healthcare professionals should be sensitized bout the importance of listening to understand, being empathetic, establishing therapeutic relationships, and requesting feedback from the patients. The hospitals should work to lower the hospital readmission rates by improving the healthcare delivery processes as well as modifying the workplace policies to ensure that the healthcare workers ensure patient safety through the provision of quality, evidence-based, and patient-centered care.
Christian World View
My Christian worldview requires that Christians embrace the teachings of the common good, human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity. My Christian worldview has an impact on how I have discussed the paper and articulated the issues. Healthcare workers have a moral duty and responsibility to use their knowledge, skills, and hospital-availed resources to improve the health of the patients (Ceullar De la Cruz & Robinson, 2017). The healthcare workers, therefore, need to adhere to the policies put in place in their places of work to improve the health outcomes of the people as a way of improving their human dignity as well as ensuring the common good for all. They should therefore be open to changes, and corrections and comply with policies, which are aimed at improving the well-being of the population. Besides being the primary care providers, the professionals should take other roles such as patient advocacy, educators, and even policymakers to make the work environment more effective in the care of the sick.
I therefore believe that the hospitals should make changes at the micro and the macro levels to improve their functioning and overall delivery of the healthcare services. A reduction in mortality rates and hospital readmission rates would be an indicator of the common good that the health workers are striving to accomplish in their laces of work, which would reflect on the high-quality services, offered. Similarly, the health workers should show compassion and empathy to the patients resulting in the establishment of therapeutic relationships that would foster open communication and recovery.
References
Afaneh, T., Abu-Moghli, F., & Ahmad, M. (2021). Nursing-sensitive indicators: A concept analysis. Nursing Management, 28(3).
Allen-Duck, A., Robinson, J. C., & Stewart, M. W. (2017). Healthcare Quality: A Concept Analysis. Nursing forum, 52(4), 377–386. https://doi.org/10.1111/nuf.12207
Cuellar De la Cruz, Y., & Robinson, S. (2017). Answering the call to accessible quality health care for all using a new model of local community not-for-profit charity clinics: A return to Christ-centered care of the past. The Linacre quarterly, 84(1), 44–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/00243639.2016.1274631
Grocott, A., & McSherry, W. (2018). The Patient Experience: Informing Practice through Identification of Meaningful Communication from the Patient’s Perspective. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 6(1), 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare6010026
Oner, B., Zengul, F. D., Oner, N., Ivankova, N. V., Karadag, A., & Patrician, P. A. (2021). Nursing‐sensitive indicators for nursing care: A systematic review (1997–2017). Nursing open, 8(3), 1005-1022.
Shenoy, A. (2021). Patient safety from the perspective of quality management frameworks: a review. Patient Safety in Surgery, 15(1), 1-6.
Tiwari, D., O’Donnell, A., Renaut, R., Richardson, T., & Allen, S. (2020). Reducing hospital mortality: Incremental change informed by structured mortality review is effective. Future healthcare journal, 7(2), 143–148. https://doi.org/10.7861/fhj.2019-0022
Upadhyay, S., Stephenson, A. L., & Smith, D. G. (2019). Readmission Rates and Their Impact on Hospital Financial Performance: A Study of Washington Hospitals. Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financing, 56, 46958019860386. https://doi.org/10.1177/0046958019860386