Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods
You are a DNP-prepared nurse working at a hospital focused on improving patient satisfaction. After receiving care at your hospital, patients are provided a scorecard to survey their patient experience. The patient surveys range in questions from wait time to effectiveness of care, and these surveys provide your hospital with a scorecard indicating how the hospital is performing against these metrics. Upon reviewing the scorecards, you are able to highlight areas of improvement and areas of success, however, you find the responses are often difficult to analyze, as there are a wide range of responses, and there are many variables.

Photo Credit: Getty Images
The process of constructing a balanced scorecard for the tracking of patient satisfaction can be controversial. For example, a hospital’s patient satisfaction scorecard provides a snapshot of gathered data for the hospital, but the data may be out of context, which makes it difficult to identify specific problems. It is evident that both scorecards and dashboards have a place in the healthcare setting; however, will all organizations and accrediting bodies agree on the aspects of implementation, data analysis, and levels of effectiveness?
For this Discussion, you will explore key indicators involved with the use of scorecards and dashboards for tracking organizational performance. Reflect on a particular healthcare organization or nursing practice with an established scorecard or dashboard measuring patient experience.  Measurement of Systems and Methods Essay Case Study

To Prepare:
• Review the Learning Resources for this week, and reflect on how a healthcare organization or nursing practice setting uses scorecards and dashboards.
• Select any healthcare organization or nursing practice setting that has an established scorecard or dashboard measuring patient experience and improvement goals.
• Be sure to obtain an example of the scorecard or dashboard from the healthcare organization or nursing practice setting (you selected) for this Discussion.
• Reflect on how these measurement systems and measurement methods may impact organizational goal setting in the areas of overall performance and financial stability.
• Explore the key indicators involved with scorecards and dashboards, as well as the external quality standards to which they are compared.
• Reflect on what the metrics used in the balanced scorecards and dashboards might mean to your specific organization and/or nursing practice. Has your organization established goals for these or similar metrics and are they currently being met? Why, or why not?

. Addressed each of the bullets below with a subtopic, all the references used must have an in-text citation in each paragraph. All Articles MUST BE PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES THAT MUST BE USED AND should come from USA and must be within last four years only that is from 2017 to 2021. Please do not begin a paragraph with author name(s) (PLEASE USE parenthetical/in-text citations APA format and 7 edition)

• Brief description of the healthcare organization or nursing practice setting you selected (Community Health care Family practice)
• Summarize the measures on the scorecard or dashboard in which patient experience of care is measured, tracked, and used to set improvement goals. Be specific.
• Explain whether goals at your organization are established, for these metrics you reviewed, and whether or not they are currently being met.
• Then, describe the potential impacts of meeting or not meeting these metrics for your healthcare organization, and explain why. Be specific and provide examples.

Please must use this textbook
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.
• Chapter 9, “The Patient Experience” (pp. 233–251)

Measurement of Systems and Methods: Measuring Patient Satisfaction

Patient satisfaction surveys form a very important part of public reporting that healthcare organizations are expected to do. It is from these surveys that the institution can determine areas that require improvement to make the quality of services delivered be better (Nash et al., 2019). Also relying on the scores from these patient satisfaction surveys are healthcare regulatory and accrediting bodies such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality or AHRQ, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations or JCAHO, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance or NCQA. In the United States, the survey instrument most commonly used and recommended for measuring patient satisfaction is the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems or HCAHPS (CMS, 2021). The purpose of this paper is to present a short discussion about the scorecard and dashboard metrics measured during a patient satisfaction survey.

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The Healthcare Organization Setting

The practice setting of reference for this paper is a community health care family practice in a rural setting. The clinic offers mainly primary health care services to members of the community that it serves (Pindus et al., 2018). The clinician is a DNP-trained advanced practice nurse with accreditation and licensure under full practice authority. This means that she is not under the supervision of any collaborating physician and is discharging all the prescriptive duties autonomously. Any patient satisfaction survey carried out will therefore directly reflect her competency, communication skills, and work ethic.  Measurement of Systems and Methods Essay Case Study

Measures Used to Track Patient Experience and Set Improvement Goals

Like with any quality improvement task, there are outcome measures on the scorecard or as dashboard metrics that are used to set performance improvement goals and to track patient satisfaction (Nash et al., 2019; Spath, 2018). In the case of this practice setting, these measures include facility cleanliness, responsiveness of staff (including the clinician) when called upon by patients, clinician-patient rapport and communication, patient education on drugs and treatment given, clarity of discharge instructions, and the question of whether the responding patient would recommend the facility to another patient/ person (CMS, 2021; Ng et al., 2018).

Organizational Goal Establishment and Achievement

In the aforementioned establishment, quality goals are clearly set and performance is also periodically measured. Clear dashboard metrics and scorecard measures exist to direct the collection of the necessary data on quality. In honest assessment, the metrics mentioned above for this organization are being met with satisfaction (Karaca & Durna, 2019). This has been determined following high scores in the most recent surveys done by way of the HCAHPS.

The Potential Impact of Meeting or Not Meeting the Stated Performance Metrics

The most obvious consequence of not meeting the performance metrics threshold is that patients will shun the practice due to poor quality services and its sustainability will be a problem. With no patients there will be no revenue generated and the practice may end up shutting down (Davidson et al., 2016). On the other hand, meeting the quality improvement goals encapsulated in the metrics will see a greater number of patients visiting the practice through word-of-mouth advertisement. This means more revenue, more expansion, better remuneration (higher reimbursement) and even better job satisfaction.

Conclusion

The matter of quality improvement in healthcare is a very important one for patient safety. One of the ways of gauging whether services provided in a healthcare setting are up to par is through patient satisfaction surveys. This is normally done using the HCAHPS survey tool. Meeting patient satisfaction goals through the set performance metrics means more practice success, including on the revenue front.

Discussion: Measurement Systems and Methods

You are a DNP-prepared nurse working at a hospital focused on improving patient satisfaction. After receiving care at your hospital, patients are provided a scorecard to survey their patient experience. The patient surveys range in questions from wait time to effectiveness of care, and these surveys provide your hospital with a scorecard indicating how the hospital is performing against these metrics. Upon reviewing the scorecards, you are able to highlight areas of improvement and areas of success, however, you find the responses are often difficult to analyze, as there are a wide range of responses, and there are many variables.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The process of constructing a balanced scorecard for the tracking of patient satisfaction can be controversial. For example, a hospital’s patient satisfaction scorecard provides a snapshot of gathered data for the hospital, but the data may be out of context, which makes it difficult to identify specific problems. It is evident that both scorecards and dashboards have a place in the healthcare setting; however, will all organizations and accrediting bodies agree on the aspects of implementation, data analysis, and levels of effectiveness?

For this Discussion, you will explore key indicators involved with the use of scorecards and dashboards for tracking organizational performance. Reflect on a particular healthcare organization or nursing practice with an established scorecard or dashboard measuring patient experience.  Measurement of Systems and Methods Essay Case Study

To Prepare:

• Review the Learning Resources for this week, and reflect on how a healthcare organization or nursing practice setting uses scorecards and dashboards.
• Select any healthcare organization or nursing practice setting that has an established scorecard or dashboard measuring patient experience and improvement goals.
• Be sure to obtain an example of the scorecard or dashboard from the healthcare organization or nursing practice setting (you selected) for this Discussion.
• Reflect on how these measurement systems and measurement methods may impact organizational goal setting in the areas of overall performance and financial stability.
• Explore the key indicators involved with scorecards and dashboards, as well as the external quality standards to which they are compared.
• Reflect on what the metrics used in the balanced scorecards and dashboards might mean to your specific organization and/or nursing practice. Has your organization established goals for these or similar metrics and are they currently being met? Why, or why not?

. Addressed each of the bullets below with a subtopic, all the references used must have an in-text citation in each paragraph. All Articles MUST BE PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES THAT MUST BE USED AND should come from USA and must be within last four years only that is from 2017 to 2021. Please do not begin a paragraph with author name(s) (PLEASE USE parenthetical/in-text citations APA format and 7 edition)

• Brief description of the healthcare organization or nursing practice setting you selected (Community Health care Family practice)
• Summarize the measures on the scorecard or dashboard in which patient experience of care is measured, tracked, and used to set improvement goals. Be specific.
• Explain whether goals at your organization are established, for these metrics you reviewed, and whether or not they are currently being met.
• Then, describe the potential impacts of meeting or not meeting these metrics for your healthcare organization, and explain why. Be specific and provide examples.

Please must use this textbook

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.

• Chapter 9, “The Patient Experience” (pp. 233–251)    Measurement of Systems and Methods Essay Case Study