Ethical and Sustainable Actions to Address the Underperformed Benchmarks

• Patient’s Education: it is imperative to educate patients regarding the importance of foot and eye examinations. This education will include complete information about the benefits of these tests and the risks associated with inadequate screening. Proper information regarding the topic will enable patients to make informed decisions for their healthcare. Healthcare providers must abide by the principle of autonomy whereby, respecting patients’ rights to be informed and make decisions accordingly (Paterick et al., 2020). 
• Pre-scheduling of appointments: To ensure that patients are adequately screened, healthcare providers should book their eye and foot examination appointments together with their physician follow-ups. These combined appointments have multiple benefits physicians can track the progress and reduce extra responsibilities for the patients too (Lewis et al., 2020). This pre-scheduling of the appointments follows the ethical principles of beneficence and justice whereby patients’ benefit is kept on priority and a fair and equal treatment is undertaken for all the patients. 

Conclusion 

To conclude, Mercy Medical Center is short failing for all the metrics of diabetes screening (eyes, foot, and HgBA1c tests) as compared to the national and state-level benchmarks. The organization needs to understand the importance of these metrics and take action to improve underperformance. These actions include patients’ education and the pre-scheduling of appointments. The actions proposed are ethically sound and remain sustainable for constant improvements. Evaluation of dashboard metrics and measures to address these are important for improving the quality of healthcare and organizational performance. 

References

AHRQ. (n.d.). National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports (NHQDR). NHQDR Data Tools | AHRQ Data Tools. Retrieved from. https://datatools.ahrq.gov/nhqdr?count=2&tab=nhqdrnabe&type=subtab 

Assem, A. S., Tegegne, M. M., Alemu, D. S., Woredekal, A. T., & Tefera, T. K. (2020). Knowledge about diabetic retinopathy, eye check-up practice, and associated factors among adult patients with diabetes mellitus attending at debark hospital, Northwest Ethiopia. BMC Ophthalmology, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12886-020-01730-4 

Jia, H., Liu, L., Huo, G., Wang, R., Zhou, Y., & Yang, L. (2020). A qualitative study of the cognitive behavioral intention of patients with diabetes in rural China who have experienced delayed diagnosis and treatment. BMC Public Health, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-08636-2 

Lewis, J. E., Morris, K., Powell, T., Thomas, R. L., & Owens, D. R. (2020). Combining diabetic foot and retinopathy screening: A step in the right direction? – a feasibility study. SAGE Open Medicine,