Introduction
Care coordination entails purposefully planning aspects of patient care and disseminating information among all parties involved in a patient’s treatment to provide better, safer, and more efficient care. A care coordinator is a trained health care professional who assists in the coordination of a patient’s care, such as the disabled or elderly. Care coordinators are responsible for indirect drug reimbursement submissions, palliative care, and project management (Hambly et al., 2019). They organize and manage customers’ treatment protocols, enlighten them about their situation, connect them with appropriate healthcare professionals, and track their progress.
Patient-centered care is a fundamental component of elevated treatment that has been related to improved health-related consequences and reduced healthcare utilization. Furthermore, it has been suggested that if customers do not have active participation in the operation, adopting the concepts of patient-centered care will not result in the actual change (Goodridge et al., 2018). As such, clinicians and policymakers should adopt effective strategies to ensure that patients and their families are engaged in the treatment process for better patients health outcomes and results and customer satisfaction.
Practical Strategies for Collaboration with Patients
First, the paper discusses some of the effective strategies that nurses and clinicians could embrace in collaboration with their patients to achieve the best health outcomes and satisfaction among their patients. Additionally, when the adopted strategies are effective, a healthy nurse-patient relationship is achieved. In collaborative partnerships with experts, customer participation entails patients actively taking responsibilities within the medical community to enhance health service services (Goodridge et al., 2018). They suggest the following practical strategies for better healthcare outcomes.
Transparency and leadership strategy – Honesty with patients and family should be encouraged, especially in poor health outcomes. Caregivers can enhance honesty with their patients by providing possibilities for patients and their families to participate in their care. Clinicians can achieve the above objective by enabling their patients and their families access to the patients’ portals for improved trust. Again, patients and healthcare providers must concur on expectations and set realistic roles and responsibilities for achieving health outcomes. Furthermore, clinical team members provide clinical component guidance, and as such, patients and relatives share their viewpoints until a consensus on goals is reached.
Negotiation, teamwork, and communication strategy – Clinicians should treat their patients and together with their families as team members and give them timely, accurate, and relevant information concerning their care and treatment. Furthermore, the healthcare staff should engage in collaborative negotiation (Goodridge et al., 2018). Therefore, patients’ preferences, concerns, and expected results should be known to the healthcare staff to achieve desirable health outcomes and maintain a robust clinician-patient relationship.
Managing Change in the Healthcare
Change is the only consistent variable in any healthcare institution. Furthermore, technological improvements, aging demographics, changing illness patterns, and breakthroughs for illness treatment necessitate a virtually constant change in health care institutions and experts (Nilsen et al., 2020). Patient experience can be defined as a patient’s interaction with the healthcare system, encompassing all aspects of care (Berkowitz, 2016). Patient satisfaction refers to the contentment of patients’ expectations of the treatment they desire or pay for. Subjectively, it relates to the reality that various patients will have a varying degree of fulfillment for the same healthcare level due to different expectations (Berkowitz, 2016). Nonetheless, collaborative medical decisions and customer engagement have been identified as critical aspects of the value paradigm (Marzorati & Pravettoni, 2017). The following elements of change in healthcare institutions may positively impact patients’ health outcomes and improve patient experience and satisfaction.
Technological Implementation – Technological advancements provide several concrete instances of process implementation in medical practice. For example, the technology was used to develop a portal where patients could view their health records (Berkowitz, 2016). The main goal of this innovation was to get patients involved in their care. Patient access to their healthcare team increased as a result of this innovation, as did patient satisfaction. Furthermore, Kaiser Permanente technology developed a plan for notifications to help nurses make better decisions and improve best practices, including pressure ulcer prevention and falls (Berkowitz, 2016).
A pleasant working atmosphere – There have been links discovered regarding patient satisfaction and nurse-friendly work settings. Berkowitz (2016) looked into the connection between a nurse’s workplace setting and customer satisfaction. In his study, he used the HCAHPS data to assess the patient’s hospital experience. The nurse work environment was measured in three subscales of the Nursing Work Index’s Practice Environment Scale. The findings were that measures of work environment quality and staffing ratios were strongly related to patient satisfaction (Berkowitz, 2016).
The Rationale for Coordinated Care Plans Based on Ethical Decision Making
Influencing patient care results are affected by many factors, all of which must be considered by the healthcare practitioner to make a more ethical decision. These forces include, among other things, knowledge and abilities, an awareness of the fundamental moral values, and positive interaction with patients. When it comes to integrated care, ethical decision-making is critical; sharing information with many parties necessitates a great degree of professionalism, and the decisions taken should be kept confidential. As a result, the coordinated care effort should be based on the ethics that the society adheres to.
The ethical approach to integrated care will be vital to guarantee that the community helps the healthcare professionals’ norms and regulations and their operations within the jurisdiction. Ethical principles guide decisions, such as utilitarianism and deontology. Individuals make ethical decisions when they keep to their duties and tasks when making decisions, according to deontology. Utilitarianism is predicated on the premise that an integrated care worker will choose based on their ability to forecast the effects of their actions. Utilitarianism can be categorized as either rule utilitarianism or act utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism denotes that the mass of the population benefits from the care coordinators’ actions. Utilitarianism is predicated on the notion that decisions are made based on law and justice, despite the outcome.
The Potential Impact of Specific Health Care Policy Provisions on Outcomes and Patient Experiences
Health insurance companies are responsible for covering their clients’ medical expenses. Clients can purchase health insurance individually or through a government-sponsored program. Health insurance policy features have varying effects on patients. Patients’ experiences vary, as some have positive interactions with health insurance service providers, while others have poor encounters with insurance health provisions. In the negative criticism, insurance companies have failed to fulfill their obligation and pay for health expenses.
Awareness of the Nursing Role in the Coordination and Continuum of Care
To guarantee continuity of care, nurses hold the following positions to secure good care coordination:
- Conducting thorough inspections and assessments, including validating the patient’s needs.
- It is about teaching the client and their extended family how to make well-informed decisions that will result in high-quality healthcare.
- The nurse is also in charge of pushing for workplace policies that promote better care coordination.
- Assisting patients in navigating the healthcare system by educating them on strategy, procedure, and organization and helping them develop effective methods for navigating such systems.
References
Berkowitz B. (2016). The patient experience and patient satisfaction: Measurement of a complex dynamic. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 21(1), 1. Web.
Goodridge, D., Henry, C., Watson, E., McDonald, M., New, L., Harrison, E. L., Scharf, M., Penz, E., Campbell, S., & Rotter, T. (2018). Structured approaches to promote patient and family engagement in treatment in acute care hospital settings: Protocol for a systematic scoping review. Systematic Reviews, 7(1), 35. Web.
Hambly, N., Goodwin, S., Aziz-Ur-Rehman, A., Makhdami, N., Ainslie-Garcia, M., Grima, D., Cox, G., Kolb, M., Fung, D., Cabalteja, C., DeMarco, P., & Moldaver, D. (2019). A cross-sectional evaluation of the idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patient satisfaction and quality of life with a care coordinator. Journal of Thoracic Disease, 11(12), 5547–5556. Web.
Marzorati, C., & Pravettoni, G. (2017). Value as the key concept in the health care system: How it has influenced medical practice and clinical decision-making processes. Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, 10, 101–106. Web.
Nilsen, P., Seing, I., Ericsson, C., Birken, S. A., & Schildmeijer, K. (2020). Characteristics of successful changes in health care organizations: An interview study with physicians, registered nurses and assistant nurses. BMC Health Services Research, 20(1), 1-8. Web.