Policy Description
Mercy Medical Center should offer a 15% discount to new patients who are referred by patients already in the database (Tolonen et al., 2021). A discount will be provided on the eye and foot exam for signs of diabetes. It is necessary to notify current patients about this information after admission and to tell them that diabetes is hereditary, and that, with the help of foot and eye exams, it can be identified at an early stage through the patient’s relatives.
The Need for Creating a Policy
Current Benchmark
The current benchmark for the organization is the number of patients who came in during the first quarter of 2020 (Minnesota Department of Health, 2022). At that time, the benchmark was 72-75 patients for each of the exams (Blades, 2022). However, in the second quarter of the same year, the indicator decreased significantly: the number of patients for each exam decreased to 40% (Kruk et al., 2022). Currently, the average numerical score for underperformance is 20% (Helminski et al., 2022). Although the number of patients has increased since the second quarter, it has not yet reached the benchmark.
Potential Effect of Benchmark Underperformance
The benchmark’s underperformance may impact the organization’s operations and the delivery of high-quality care. Better care could be provided if diabetes were detected at an early stage (AvilĂ©s-Santa et al., 2020). Then it would be possible to prevent the disease from progressing to a more advanced stage, and care would have a greater effect. Reducing the number of patients attending eye and foot exams also reduces the number of early diagnoses (AvilĂ©s-Santa et al., 2020). Care is provided to patients with later stages of diabetes, whose options for effective care are limited.
Potential Repercussions for No Changes
The potential repercussions of not making any changes may lead to more frequent treatment of patients with late-stage diabetes. Their treatment will not be as successful as that of patients in the early stages, and Mercy Medical Center’s reputation and patient turnover will deteriorate. Evidence supporting my conclusion is an article by AvilĂ©s-Santa et al. on the general level of diabetes awareness (2020). Most often, people are more likely to blame doctors when treatment results are worse than expected, or worse than those of their acquaintances (AvilĂ©s-Santa et al., 2020). This is due to a lack of knowledge about diabetes, its various degrees, and treatment prognoses.
Proposed Organizational Policy & Practice Guidelines
Federal health care policy on the need for an annual medical examination prescribes relevant performance benchmarks that my policy proposal addresses. During this check-up, the therapist assigns mandatory specialists to each patient based on their risk factors (Greger, 2021). Then, patients with a genetic risk factor for diabetes mellitus can be referred to the foot and eye check-up offered by my policy proposal.
Potential Effects of Environmental Factors
Regulatory considerations that could affect my recommended guidelines are the introduction of a free medical check-up for more groups of citizens. Then the demand for paid eye and foot consultations at Mercy Medical Center will drop. Resources that could affect my recommended guidelines are government support services. They can expand the number of free services provided to patients, and they will not need to go to a private clinic.
Ethical & Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines
Evidence-Based Literature
The evidence-based literature suggests potential strategies to improve performance for my targeted benchmark. Since diabetes is a hereditary disease, clients can be found among relatives of current patients (Avilés-Santa et al., 2020). Moreover, an unhealthy lifestyle can lead to diabetes, which, like the patients themselves, can be influenced by their friends (Avilés-Santa et al., 2020).
Therefore, it is necessary to review the patient contacts treated by Mercy Medical Center, select an administrator, and ask him to call the patients. The employee should find out how they are doing, remind them about the clinic, and offer a discount on the eye and foot check-up procedure (Stivers & Timmermans, 2020). Telling people about this promotion can bring in warm, interested clients rather than cold ones.
Impact of Strategies
By using these tactics, performance enhancement or adherence to relevant local, state, or federal health care laws or policies would be guaranteed. Friends and relatives of patients who have already been served at the clinic may have a similar financial status (Stivers & Timmermans, 2020). This means that, even with the introduction of a free check-up, they may still prefer Mercy Medical Center’s services. Their financial status will allow them to undergo a mandatory annual check-up for employees at their chosen verified clinic.
Ensuring Ethical & Cultural Inclusivity
I can ensure these tactics are applied in a way that is morally and culturally appropriate. Each patient’s medical record contains information about their religion and cultural background. If the patient belongs to a more closed culture, the calls will be made by an administrator of the same gender as the patient (Stivers & Timmermans, 2020).
Patients will only be called during business hours on weekdays (Ordoñez-Rufat et al., 2021). The receptionist will ask if it is convenient for the patient to speak so as not to disturb them. The direct impact of these changes on the stakeholders’ work setting is greater attention to the customer, aimed at their retention, rather than a one-time inspection. The new job requirements are the ability to sell services and address clients’ objections.
Stakeholders & Groups Involved
It is important to engage stakeholders, including Mercy Medical Center employees and a group of medical professionals, as they are the ones who directly contact patients. It is based on interaction with them that patients decide whether to return to the clinic and recommend it to their friends (Stivers & Timmermans, 2020). Their involvement can strengthen the policy and make it easier to implement.
Most patients trust their doctor and will listen to their opinion (Stivers & Timmermans, 2020). Advice from a stakeholder about a discount and the need for a check-up for a relative will be more authoritative for the patient than other methods of communicating this information. That is why it is important to involve Mercy Medical Center medical professionals in this policy.
Strategies for Collaborating
The stakeholder group plays a major role in implementing my proposal. It is the interaction with them and their sincere recommendations for preventive foot and eye check-ups that will determine customers’ actions and whether they will listen to these tips. The group of stakeholders and their cooperation are critical to the implementation’s success. It is these people who are responsible for effective work, internal processes, and maintaining order at Mercy Medical Center.
Medical staff provide services to patients, and the quality of those services is the main factor in customer retention (Stivers & Timmermans, 2020). The degree of satisfaction from contacting stakeholders depends on whether the patient will want to use the health policy check-up at a reduced price and whether they will entrust their friends and relatives to Mercy Medical Center.
References
Avilés-Santa, M. L., Monroig-Rivera, A., Soto-Soto, A., & Lindberg, N. M. (2020). Current state of diabetes mellitus prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control in Latin America: Challenges and innovative solutions to improve health outcomes across the continent. Diabetes Epidemiology, 20(62), 798-801.
Blades, N. (2022). Eye Exams for people with diabetes. WebMD.
Greger, M. (2021). Should you get an annual health check-up? Nutrition Facts.
Helminski, D., Kurlander, J. E., Renji, A. D., Sussman, J. B., Pfeiffer, P. N., Conte, M. L., Gadabu, O. J., Kokaly, A. N., Goldberg, R., Ranusch, A., Damschroder, L. J., & Landis-Lewis, Z. (2022). Dashboards in health care settings: Protocol for a scoping review. JMIR Research Protocols.
Kruk, M. E., Gage, A. D., Arsenault, C., Jordan, K., Leslie, H. H., Roder-DeWan, S., Adeyi, O., Barker, P., Daelmans, B., Doubova, S. V., English, M., Elorrio, E. G., Guanais, F., Gureje, O., Hirschhorn, L. R., Jiang, L., Kelley, E., Lemango, E. T., Liljestrand, J., & Malata, A. (2018). High-quality health systems in the sustainable development goals era: Time for a revolution. The Lancet Global Health, 6(11), e1196–e1252.
Minnesota Department of Health. (2022). Population-level indicators for monitoring the picture of diabetes in Minnesota.
Ordoñez-Rufat, P., Polit-MartĂnez, R. N., MartĂnez-Estalella, G., & Videla-Ces, S. (2021). Emotional intelligence of intensive care nurses in a tertiary hospital. EnfermerĂa Intensiva, 32(3), 125-132.
Tolonen, H., Reinikainen, J., Koponen, P., Elonheimo, H., Palmieri, L., & Tijhuis, M. J. (2021). Cross-national comparisons of health indicators require standardized definitions and common data sources. Archives of Public Health, 79(1).
Stivers, T., & Timmermans, S. (2020). Medical authority under siege: How clinicians transform patient resistance into acceptance. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 61(1), 39-62.
