Challenges Associated with Meeting Prescribed Benchmarks

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.