Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center (OLGMC) is one of the largest medical centers in Louisiana. It provides a full set of tertiary care services and maintains 334 staffed beds as well as an acute care medical center in Acadiana (“About Ochsner,” 2022). The organization is known for its high standards of care as well as the implementation and promotion of evidence-based practices. This facility works with several national agencies to track and implement the newest evidence-based practices. These include the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institute of Health, the National Library of Medicine, and the US Preventive Services Task Force (“Evidence-based medicine, 2022). All of these organizations help develop and distribute the knowledge, tools, and data to improve the healthcare system, make discoveries, offer access to vast libraries of medical studies, and engage in preventive efforts.
Several quality indicators to utilize as a priority for an action plan in OLGMC include reducing waiting times for patients, decreasing staff burnout, and reducing turnover rates. OLGMC is suffering from understaffing, which in turn affects how people perform, the amount of time patients need to wait in line, and the general quality of healthcare (“Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center,” 2022). Some of the recommendations to help bridge the gaps in care in regards to metrics and quality indicators include the following (Shaffer & Curtin, 2020):
- Increasing salaries and hiring rates;
- Engaging in inviting professionals from abroad to help temporarily cover the vacancies needed;
- Achieving better work-life balance for employees;
- Implementing better and more flexible management practices to save time and resources.
These measures should help increase staffing rates, decrease turnover, and improve the quality of care in OLGMC from both short-term and long-term perspectives.
In addition, information sharing is viewed as a priority in the specified facility. Specifically, nursing leaders provide guidance to registered nurses and the rest of the staff by sharing the outcomes of undertaken measures. The process takes place both as offering general guidance and communicating essential information to each staff member individually. While the latter occurs on a personal level, the former is introduced as shared information for all participants to access. The proposed solution contributes to a proper grasp on the core objectives among employees while also encouraging them to improve the quality of their performance. Most importantly, the data linked to patients and changes in their well-being is stored in a database that can be accessed by all staff members involved in the treatment process. Thus, the threat of medical errors is minimized since the premises for them are likely to be noticed early and prevented, thus leading to better patient outcomes. Moreover, the proposed solution, namely, the active and professional use of EHR, leads to an improved continuity of care. Therefore, the suggested manner of managing information should be considered optimal.
References
About Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center. (2022). Web.
Evidence-based medicine (EBM). (2022). Web.
Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center. (2022). Web.
Shaffer, F. A., & Curtin, L. (2020). Nurse turnover: Understand it, reduce it. My American Nurse, 15(8), 57-59.