Clinical care improvement

Orlando health, an acute care hospital assessment data and scores indicate an overall satisfactory rating on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). However, some critical areas score poorly below the national average. These areas are essential in-patient care outcomes and require improvements to provide safe and efficient patient care. The three areas of improvement noted from the survey are; medication counseling by nurses before administration of medicines to patients, long waiting time at the emergency department and the waiting time for the admitted patient to move to the inpatient department for admission. Medication counseling improvement Medication adherence is critical in the management of the patient, healthcare providers ought to clearly explain the medications to patients to enhance the understanding and adherence of patients.

A rapid assessment (RA) unit is established which combines the space and personnel from triage, registration and express care areas. The RA conducts initial patient assessments and treats low acute patients who do not meet triage criteria for acute care hence, reducing the number of patients moving to the acute care area (Sayah, Rogers, Devarajan, Kingsley-Rocker & Lobon, 2014). Another strategy to improve flow is to establish clear staff job descriptions to reduce overlap in responsibilities and redundancies which delay patient care and impend communication among staff and patients (Sayah, Rogers, Devarajan, Kingsley-Rocker & Lobon, 2014). Transition from emergency department to inpatient department improvement To improve the waiting time for the admitted patient to move to inpatient department, the hospital can institute a fax-nursing hand-off.