Financial Problem Analysis
The conducted literature review and interview reveal a range of financial problems that are primarily associated with patients’ views and expectations. The first problem is the erroneous perception of the value-for-money factor. The majority of patients are unaware of the cost and treatment options that are delivered to them. Most of them consider that the above issues are the responsibility of their doctors and nurses. As a result, when their perceived expectations turn out to be unfulfilled, patients’ satisfaction significantly decreases and their trust in health care reduces. The inability to assess the effectiveness of services is associated with the lack of knowledge and experience, as noted by Teke et al. (2012). Therefore, it becomes evident that there is a dire need to develop and implement patient education in the field of the financial value of interventions.
The second financial problem refers to the lack of financial resources and care quality. Inappropriate budgeting affects the quality of care, making it less attentive to the needs of patients and leading to discrimination. For example, in case with elderly patients, one may note the so-called ageism that can be identified as the inability to take into account age peculiarities while providing care. The lack of resources acts as a barrier for nurses to properly care for patients due to the absence of the required equipment, tools, etc. As a result, nurses have to experience moral distress that also negatively affects care quality and patient satisfaction. It is important to pay more attention to this problem and consider its budget impact.
Potential Budget Impact
Both of the mentioned financial problems may be evaluated as having a large potential impact on budget. These problems require a significant amount of funding to ensure patient satisfaction. Even though some of the ways to address the identified challenges are associated with patient education and changing the approach to care delivery, it is still essential to increase funding and provide the sufficient amount of resources. According to Sullivan et al. (2014), there is a range of factors to be involved in the potential budget impact such as treatment patterns, validity, sensitivity, and any other official statistical information. Thus, the potential impact on budget is expected to be significant.
Considering the fact that nowadays financing of health care services remains insufficient, the situation becomes even more critical. Following the principles of health insurance and market relations, budgetary resources are not the leading source of financing for healthcare organizations, amounting nevertheless to a significant portion of the total allocation. The most important source of financing for health care is the means of medical insurance programs (Sullivan et al., 2014). Budgetary health institutions also have additional sources of income that they receive from different enterprises, organizations, institutions, etc. for the delivery of various types of health services. The involvement of these sources is an initiative of a head of the health organization.
Role of Nursing
From the perspective of a chief nurse, one of the roles that nursing has in relation to the revealed problems is advocacy for patients’ rights. As nurse leaders, they may develop and implement strategies on providing service-efficient care. Mosadeghrad (2014) argue that nurses may report about this problem to higher management and other health-related organizations, thus attracting the public to the issue and contributing to its resolution. Considering patients’ perception of health care delivery as the integrity of quality and cost, it is possible to anticipate their expectations. To assess the effectiveness of the use of financial resources, an economic analysis of expenditures by budget classification, service costs, and the ratio of costs for treatment and patient care are needed (Mosadeghrad, 2014). The financial analysis will allow estimating resources to define both strong and weak sides of the use of money resources.
From the view of a nurse manager, it is critical to continuously monitor the level of patients’ satisfaction and introduce the relevant educational sessions. The role of nursing in addressing the identified financial problems is to help clients to understand the value of the potential interventions and medication prescribed by a physician. It is a nurse who can clearly explain to a patient the sense of costs of one or the other treatment option. In case patients would perceive their disease and care options adequately, the problem may be considered addressed. In other words, the paramount role of nursing is to act as the direct educator in relation to patients.
As for a staff nurse perspective, it should be stated that it is important to collect patient data and analyze its key indicators. After that, staff nurses are expected to provide the analyzed data to higher management for further interpretation, discussion, and the subsequent decision-making. In other words, the role of staff nurses is data collection and integration. The results of the data analysis can serve as the basis for the development of a financial strategy aimed at improving the quality of services to the population, thus strengthening the economic essence of financing health care.
References
Mosadeghrad, A. M. (2014). Factors influencing healthcare service quality. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 3(2), 77-89.
Sullivan, S. D., Mauskopf, J. A., Augustovski, F., Caro, J. J., Lee, K. M., Minchin, M.,… Shau, W. Y. (2014). Budget impact analysis—principles of good practice: Report of the ISPOR 2012 Budget Impact Analysis Good Practice II Task Force. Value in Health, 17(1), 5-14.
Teke, A., Cengiz, E., Çetin, M., Demir, C., Kirkbir, F., & Fedai, T. (2012). Analysis of the multi-item dimensionality of patients’ perceived value in hospital services. Journal of Medical Systems, 36(3), 1301-1307.