The primary goals of the U.S. healthcare system are to ensure quality medical care and reduce the cost of inadequate services. For instance, patient harm, such as impairment, disability, lost productivity, and mortality rates can result from poor medical services (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). Hence, quality measures are implemented to quantify processes involved in health care provision and evaluate performance. They include patient satisfaction, timeliness of care, readmissions, hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), nurse-to-patient ratios, number of board-certified practitioners, and other measures. Such an approach not only helps allocate resources effectively, reducing staff burnout but also provides a number of benefits affecting patient outcomes. In particular, reduced cost, improved health of the nation, enhanced patient care, and the shift to a value-based model are among the main advantages of the quality measures approach.
The pay-for-performance approach is another tactic utilized to improve the quality of patient care. Hospitals are provided with financial incentives for accomplishing objectives, while health care institutions that fail to meet the requirements are penalized (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). Pay-for-performance offers such advantages as promoting positive patient outcomes, emphasizing quality of care, supporting safe and efficient clinical practices, and employing qualified practitioners. Furthermore, this value-based model reduces the number of medical errors and readmissions, ensures sufficient staffing, and eliminates nurses’ burnout.
Quality measures and pay-for-performance affect nursing practice, implying expanded responsibilities of the nurses’ role. In particular, they are at the forefront of adopting recommended clinical practices and promoting patient care. In this regard, a nurse can act as a patient advocate, improving satisfaction with health care services to ensure quality measures are met. The nursing personnel are responsible for following medical care standards and adhering to nursing ethics. Furthermore, ensuring data transparency in quality measures is vital for overall performance.
Order this paper