Organizational Leadership & Interprofessional Team Development Business Practices
Name
Institution
Regulatory Requirements, and Reimbursement Impact to the Patient -Family-Centered Care in a Health Organization
In an organization, business practices help to determine how healthcare is delivered by instituting specific procedures and policies. Essentially, the processes and systems of an organization impact patient-centered care since they are developed to enhance the experience of the patients while maintaining structure and order. With these processes and policies well placed, patients and healthcare providers can identify the expectations and actions that will improve quality care. For instance, business practices such as well-planned visiting hours are aiming to positively influence the experience of the patient and family members.
Further, regulatory policies are existence to make sure that patient safety is maintained at all times. It is worth noting that regulatory requirements may have both negative and positive impacts on patient-centered care. Requirements can be used to maintain the patient’s safety, but it is violated, both the organization and the patient will be at risk. These rules and regulations are primarily enforced to ensure that patients are safe and if violated the health facility may suffer severe penalties. Additionally, the violation can affect the safety of staff and patients hence reducing quality care. The Agency of Health Research and Quality is one of the agencies that aid in enhancing the quality of services offered to patients via evidence-based practice (American Nurses Association, n.d).
Reimbursement in an organization is also likely to impact patient-centered care. If the patients express satisfaction through the provision of quality services offered by the staff, the organization will stand a chance to get incentives. Quality plays a significant role in reimbursement since it can decrease or increase cashflow (American Nurses Association, n.d). For instance, cutting back of staff due to budget constraints may lead to poor patient care hence limited reimbursement.
Patient-and Family-Centered Care Organizational Self -Assessment Tool
Healthcare Setting for the PFCC
The PFCC tool that will be used in this case is for one of the largest medicines and pediatrics practice known as UNC Family Medicine and Pediatrics. Specifically, the practice will be in Raleigh and is a part of the UNC Physician Network. As stated in the UNC Physician Network website, the network has more than 300 doctors as well as over 90 practices in 14 nations. The network serves children and adults in Wake Forest, Raleigh, and neighboring communities. The services provided by the organization include in-office procedures, visits, an onsite laboratory, vaccinations, and management of chronic illnesses (UNC Physicians Network, n.d). The primary role of healthcare professionals is to diagnose, manage, and prevent illnesses in both children and adults. Although there is no information concerning the diversity of the ethnic group served by the facility, Caucasian form the largest population of the facility patients.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Facility
| Domain | Strength | Weakness |
| Leadership | The leadership demonstrates a commitment to patents by providing all the necessary resources on their website. | Patients are not involved in the development of policy. |
| Mission, Vision, Values | The mission, values, and vision are centered on patient-centered care. | No weakness |
| Advisors | Patient advisory do exist | The councils are only available online. |
| Quality Improvement | Quality is enhanced through surveys. | Patients and family members do not participate in QI teams and meetings. |
| Personnel | Medical practitioners are always encouraged to offer patient-centered care via performance reviews and training. | Patients or family members do not participate in new staff orientation. |
| Environment design | The facility has a friendly environment, especially for pediatric patients. | The design of the facility does not allow full participation from the family members and patients. |
| Education /information | Patients can access educational resources from patient portals and online. | Patients are not educators for the care providers. |
| Diversity & disparities | The demographics of the patient are recorded and the organization has a well written non-discriminatory notice. | Patients from the minority group and the less privileged have no designated navigator. |
| Care support | Regular update is made on patients’ information. | The facility does not engage family members during shift change reports or rescue events. |
| Charting and documentation | Access to medical records both in printed and digital forms are available. | The family members and family are not allowed to chart in their records. |
| Care | Patients and their family members are allowed to participate in patient care. | No identifiable weakness in this domain |
Improvement for the Weaknesses
One of the areas of weakness identified in this facility is the lack of family/patient participation in quality improvement. This is one of the major areas selected for the development of a technique to enhance patient-centeredness in the facility. The improvement strategy will involve reviewing the existing quality improvement, developing a team and improvement plan, and implementing the plans. The plan intends to address the weakness since it will comprise of the patients’ feedback and including them in the quality improvement committee. To implement this strategy, Lewin’s change theory will be used. After the identification of the problem and gathering data, we will go to the next step of which is unfreezing. This stage will involve the development of a multidisciplinary team which comprises of different stakeholders. The team will be involved in assigning tasks, developing a plan for execution, determine a timeline for change, and discuss the evaluation of the change (Sullivan, 2017). All members will be actively involved in this stage to prevent resistance.
Financial Implications
The improvement strategy entails adding a patient or family member to the quality improvement team, hence extra cost incurred. This is a great benefit for the organization since no major expense will be involved on the part of the organization. Additionally, the execution plan will not require extra employees working hours, equipment, or materials. Therefore, the financial implication of this strategy is quite low. The only cost that will be added is staff meals since the meetings are anticipated to happen during lunch hours. It is also worth noting that this expense will not affect patient-centered care in the organization.
Methods
As a way of evaluating the success of this strategy, we will use patient satisfaction surveys, clinic data, and employee surveys. The data will be collected before the implementation process to help in comparison to data before and after the change. If the results are positive, we will automatically conclude that the change is successful.
Multidisciplinary team
| Team Member | Role |
| Nurse manager | The nurse manager will review clinical outcomes and surveys to identify areas of improvement. |
| Receptionist | The personnel will provide feedback on the administrative perspective regarding the change. |
| Medical director | The medical director will provide feedback from a care provider’s point of view. |
| Billing agent | The member will provide the financial implication of the change. |
| Quality specialist | The specialist will provide expertise on the quality improvement process while giving the pros and cons of adding family/ patient to the QI team. |
Team diversity
The facility will ensure that the QI team is as diverse as possible. Any of the team members who is encounter a patient in the facility will be required to give their perspective regarding the process.
Leadership Style
The leadership style that will be used in this case is transformational. This is style is the most effective since it will inspire the team members to support the need for the patient’s point of view of quality improvement. The transformational leadership style will be a motivational technique to the team involved in improving quality.
Implementation Strategy
Once the team has developed a process of determining the goals and tasks, the implementation process will start. To attain the best outcome, every member of the team will be required to collaborate in the process. For instance, the nurse will collect the QI reports and feedbacks, the medical director will analyze the information together with the nurse manager.
Communication strategy
The team will be informed of the importance of open communication and transparency during the implementation. The audience for this change is the facility hence will be required to communicate the information to the organizational management. Consequently, the team will be required to hold monthly meetings with management as a way of providing critical information. During the meetings, visual aids will be used to demonstrate the progress, intended results, and additional plans. The major goal of communication is to give evidence to support the approval of the organization to include patients in the quality improvement team.
Tools for the Team
Myers-Briggs indicator will be used to perform self-assessment for the team. While using this tool, all the team members will be required to give the best answer as it suits them (MBTI type at Work, n.d). Essentially, the tool will be used to determine the personality of each team member.
References
American Nurses Association. (n.d). Agencies & regulations. Retrieved from:
https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/advocacy/federal/agencies-regulations/
MBTI Type at Work. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.myersbriggs.org/type-use-for-everyday-life/mbti-type-at-work/
Sullivan, E. (2017). Effective leadership and management in nursing (9th ed.). Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN: 9780134153209
UNC Physicians Network. (n.d.). About. Retrieved from: https://www.uncpn.com/pn/about/