Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment scoring guide criteria:
- Competency 1: Analyze the effects of financial and economic factors (such as cost-benefit, supply and demand, return on investment, and risks) in a health care system on patient care, services offered, and organizational structures and operation.
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- Create a budget for expected costs and earnings over the first five years of a proposed initiative.
- Analyze the impact of a proposed initiative, once implemented, on other aspects of an organization or care setting and ways in which negative impacts could be mitigated.
- Competency 2: Develop ethical and culturally equitable solutions to economic problems within a health care organization in an effort to improve the quality of care and services offered.
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- Create an implementation plan for a proposed initiative that enables achievement of quality or service improvements in an ethical and culturally equitable way.
- Competency 3: Justify the qualitative and quantitative information used to guide economic decision making to stakeholders and colleagues.
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- Justify the relevance and significance of quantitative and qualitative economic, financial, and scholarly evidence used throughout an implementation plan to support recommendations.
- Competency 4: Develop ethical and culturally equitable economic strategies to address dynamic environmental forces and ensure the future security of an organization’s resources and its ability to provide quality care.
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- Explain strategies for ensuring that a proposed economic initiative can remain a viable asset to an organization or care setting in the face of dynamic environmental forces.
- Competency 5: Produce clear, coherent, and professional written work, in accordance with Capella writing standards.
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- Write concisely and directly using active voice.
- Adhere to the rules of grammar, usage, and mechanics.
Assessment 1
Proposing a New Initiative
The main objective of Faith Healthcare Center is to provide secure, safe, and high-quality care to patients and support and develop medical services for improved community health at affordable prices. Medication errors are common in healthcare facilities that hinder them from achieving quality care. The healthcare facility can minimize errors associated with medication and achieve patient safety by implementing a computerized physician order entry system (CPOE). This initiative could reduce costs associated with medication errors in the healthcare facility and promote economic efficiency at both micro and macro levels due to saving costs and correcting avoidable mistakes.
Last year, FHC witnessed 500 cases of medication errors. These cases could be reduced by implementing computerized physician order entry. Medication errors’ effects on healthcare facilities are broad. One of them is an increased cost due to unplanned prolonged hospitalization and treatment of the patient. In addition, the healthcare facility could be sued by the patient or their family for personal injury, which could cause the hospital to face substantial legal troubles (Poly et al., 2020). Additionally, it is also time-consuming to deal with errors, settlements, and litigation. The management team could spend money and time to create policies to reduce future medication errors instead of wasting resources on dealing with consequences. Lastly, medication errors could also impact the reputation and re-accreditation of the healthcare facility (Poly et al., 2020).
Once the computerized physician order entry system is implemented, medication errors could be reduced. Common medication errors at FHC include incorrect dosage calculation, wrong dosage form, and failure to adjust dosage according to the patient’s conditions (Poly et al., 2020).. Computerized physician order entry effectively manages medication matters in various ways to uphold cultural and ethical concerns. The system checks for problems associated with the drug, such as drug-drug interaction and allergies. In addition, the system makes sure that the order is complete and legible, and it has all the needed information, e.g., dosage form and the method of intake (Poly et al., 2020). The system also provides dosage adjustment calculations based on clinical features of the patient, such as renal function and weight. Lastly, the system provides the prescriber with the latest information concerning the drug (Poly et al., 2020).
The economic and demographic data highlight the need to provide a safe environment for all patients, increase overall recovery rates, and widen the range of services to meet customer demands and needs without exorbitant costs (Poly et al., 2020). Implementing the computerized physician entry will assist the healthcare facility with its vision of delivering quality care and achieving patient safety.
Additional information for analysis would include the rates of medication error losses. According to Donaldson et al. (2017), there are more than 100,000 reports of medical errors in the United States each year. 41% of Americans report having been involved in medical errors, and more than seven million of people are directly and indirectly affected by medication errors each year (York et al., 2019). Thus, the demand is high. Each year, the United States spends more than $40 billion on patients damaged by medication errors, which creates a notable burden on the macroeconomic level (WHO, 2017).
The computerized physician order entry system is convenient for the healthcare facility because it reduces errors, enhances patient safety, and saves money of both the patient and the country in general. The system has tools that automatically check medication allergies, drug interaction, and other related issues. Thus, healthcare professionals in the facility will be able to produce standardized, legible, and complete orders that support recovery.
References
Donaldson, L. J., Kelley, E. T., Dhingra-Kumar, N., Kieny, M. P., & Sheikh, A. (2017). Medication without harm: WHO’s third global patient safety challenge. The Lancet, 389(10080), 1680-1681.
Poly, T. N., Islam, M. M., Yang, H. C., & Li, Y. C. J. (2020). Appropriateness of overridden alerts in computerized physician order entry: Systematic review. JMIR Medical Informatics, 8(7), e15653.
World Health Organization. (2017). WHO launches global effort to halve medication-related errors in 5 years. https://www.who.int/news/item/29-03-2017-who-launches-global-effort-to-halve-medication-related-errors-in-5-years
York, J. B., Cardoso, M. Z., Azuma, D. S., Beam, K. S., Binney Jr, G. G., & Weingart, S. N. (2019). Computerized physician order entry in the neonatal intensive care unit: A narrative review. Applied Clinical Informatics, 10(03), 487-494.
