Discussion: Optimization in Health Services

Discussion: Optimization in Health Services

David is a healthcare administration leader who manages the operations of a long-term care facility. Within the past 6 months, long-term care patients and residents have experienced an increased number of hospital readmissions due to ongoing acute infections. In striving to ensure effective healthcare delivery and patient safety, David is seeking to use optimization as an analytic technique to determine how to best implement workflow processes to have clinical staff and physicians dedicate time to routine history and full-body observation to help prevent ongoing acute infections.

For this Discussion, review the resources for this week, and reflect on how optimization techniques might enhance healthcare delivery. Consider the value of optimization techniques in assisting healthcare administration leaders in providing quality patient care and safety.

By Day 3

Post a description of some problems that might lend themselves to optimization in your health services organization or one with which you are familiar, and explain why. Then, set up a fictitious optimization problem that would save one of the problems (e.g., Max z = a1x1 + a2x2, subject to constraints). Be specific, and provide examples.

Discussion

Continue the Discussion and respond to your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

Each Colleagues 250 words or more (Colleague 1 250 words, Colleague 2 250 words, Total 500 words):

· Ask a probing question, substantiated with additional background information, evidence, or research.

· Share an insight from having read your colleagues’ postings, synthesizing the information to provide new perspectives.

· Offer and support an alternative perspective, using readings from the classroom or from your own research in the Walden Library.

· Validate an idea with your own experience and additional research.

· Make a suggestion based on additional evidence drawn from readings or after synthesizing multiple postings.

· Expand on your colleagues’ postings by providing additional insights or contrasting perspectives based on readings and evidence.

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Colleague 1

Optimization in Health Services

Providing health services with the greatest possible value to patients and society given the constraints imposed by patient characteristics, health care system characteristics, budgets, and so forth relies heavily on the design of structures and processes (Crown, Buyukkaramikli,  Thokala, Morton, Sir,  Marshall, Tosh, Padula, Ijzerman, Wong, & Pasupathy, 2017). Such problems are complex and require a rigorous and systematic approach to identify the best solution. Optimization of health care system is not an easy task. Early identification of problems will help us to reduce our cost also (Albright, & Winston, 2017).

A healthcare administration leader who manages the operations of a long-term facility. Optimization of healthcare system is not an easy task. The basic goal of this program is to improve patients experience, minimize the cost and to improve patient care. You can also teach them about the importance of being pro active and need of good decision making. It is important to train the health care professionals to work as a team to find out patients’ problems from early stages. There must also be an early identification of problems, which would help to reduce costs for patients.

If a healthcare provider can pick up a disease condition or an environmental hazard form the very first point, they will be able to fix the problem effectively. Moreover, it will give higher patient satisfaction and cost effectiveness. Teamwork of healthcare system. It is important to truly cultivate the culture among the team in the beginning so that there is very little confusion.  

References

Albright, S. C., & Winston, W. L. (2017). Business analytics: Data analysis and decision making

(6th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Colleague 2

A quality improvement measure that can help any health care or medical-based organization improve patient care and overall quality decrease readmission rate. Going back to a hospital or medical facility right after a medical visit or emergency visit shows how low the quality of patient care is. It is crucial to decrease readmissions by improving the quality of care, which helps reduce readmissions. By promoting the need to decrease readmissions and make it a priority, hospitals and other medical facilities can decrease readmissions and provide higher quality patient care. Previous and current readmission rates can be used to notice improvement or lack of improvement after implementing new strategies.

The progression of the chronic disease usually causes readmissions among patients as well as insufficient post-discharge care. Insufficient post-discharge care is the primary factor contributing to these preventable re-hospitalizations. So, reducing the readmissions rates to hospitals of Medicaid and Medicare patients requires implementing and creating a new or enhanced plan for patients with better follow-up after being discharged. This plan focuses on preventing readmissions of these patients through post-discharge care based on follow-up.

A proposed solution for preventing readmissions is a process that focuses on post-discharge care through follow-up phone calls after the patient is discharged and follow-up appointments with primary care providers. The follow-up phone calls and follow-up appointments have improved patient outcomes by reducing readmissions. The phone call should be made by trained nurses and appointments held with primary care physicians in an appropriate and convenient setting. During this process, the health care provider will address any emerging issues associated with their health condition. The health care providers will also educate the patients on appropriate self-management measures.

Reference:

Hansen, L.O., Williams, M.V., & Singer, S.J. (2011). Perceptions of hospital safety climate and incidence of readmission. Health Services Research, 46, 596-616. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.library.gcu.edu:2048/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2010.01204.x