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The Health Grades report acknowledges the efforts everyone is putting in for the purpose of reducing the cost of healthcare. It argues that achieving this goal is only possible if complications and mortality rates reduce (Health Grades, 2014). According to them, having good healthcare insurance can influence costs and the quality of services.
The report also gives an analysis of the organization’s Hospital Quality Assessment of 2014. The assessment makes them conclude that hospitals perform differently (Health Grades, 2014). According to the report, each hospital can perform up to a certain standard, and when a performance analysis is done, it emerges that some hospitals perform better than others.
The report also talks about the relationship between hospital costs, complications, death, the duration of stay and geographical factors. According to the report, complications increase the direct hospital cost (Health Grades, 2014). The authors of the report argue that the same situation occurs when patients die in hospitals. In other words, death increases the direct hospital cost. Apart from complications and death, the length of stay also increases the direct hospital cost (Health Grades, 2014). However, the writers insist that direct hospital costs vary from one state to the other.
Lastly, the authors compare the cost, the length of stay and the likelihood of the occurrence of death when doctors carry out minimally invasive operations and open surgery. Their research reveals that patients that undergo minimally invasive surgery recover faster than those who undergo open surgery. Therefore, patients that undergo minimally invasive surgery stay in hospitals for shorter periods compared to those that undergo open surgery. They also found out that minimally invasive surgery is less likely to cause death compared to open surgery.
Major Issues Described in the Report
Among other issues, the Health Grade report talks about the effect of death and complications on the cost of medication and the performance of different hospitals in the country. The report asserts that more complicated conditions are more costly to the patients and require more effort from healthcare providers compared to those that are less complicated (Health Grades, 2014). The report also infers that each hospital performs differently depending on the nature of the disease. It warns patients against having too much belief in hospitals near them (Health Grades, 2014). Furthermore, it advises citizens to seek information about the performance of each hospital in order to make informed decisions about where to seek medication.
Implications to the APN
The conclusion that complications and death have an impact on the cost of hospital services and the revelation that different hospitals perform differently can have different implications on the APN. Firstly, some of the nurses might take advantage of the conclusion to deliberately hike their prices while others may use the opportunity to reduce the cost of their services (Ho, 2005). Similarly, some APNs can take advantage of the revelation that different hospitals perform differently to run away from some hospitals in favor of others. At the same time, the difference in the nature of service provision may train the nurses differently: some nurses end up being better than others due to the training they get in their work environments. Nurses that work in hospitals that perform well become good at treating some illnesses while those that work in poor performing hospitals become poor in their performance.
References
Health Grades (2014). Web.
Ho, K. (2005). The welfare effects of restricted hospital choice in the US medical care market. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research.