The realization of care outcomes that include safety, quality, and efficiency in healthcare is important. Healthcare organizations achieve these outcomes by adopting the best interventions that enhance care outcomes and the productivity of their staff. Factors such as organizational staffing are essential in ensuring that organizations achieve their desired performance outcomes. Organizations with the right staff-patient ratio can implement innovative care practices to address the actual and potential needs of their populations due to the elimination of issues such as burnout among caregivers. Staffing models guide the human resources-related decisions that organizations make. The models should not only address the immediate organizational goals but also the anticipated changes in the healthcare industry of an organization. Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to examine the recommended staffing model that is appropriate for a 30-bed acute inpatient unit. The paper also explores the quality metrics that informed the effectiveness of the adopted model, its budgetary implications, and a plan for continuous monitoring of the effectiveness and efficiency of the model.
Staffing Model
Healthcare organizations are responsible for providing care that enhances care outcomes for diverse populations.
The adoption of an effective staffing model is a crucial requirement for the realization of the desired outcomes in an institution. The adopted model should ensure the efficient utilization of scarce resources to achieve optimum outcomes in the patient care process. The appropriate staffing model for the 30-bed acute inpatient unit is the patient acuity model of staffing. The patient acuity model of staffing entails the consideration of patient care needs. The severity of patient care needs at any given period determines the staffing needs in the unit. The acuity-based staffing model ensures that the management balances the staff needed in a shift based on the patient needs rather than numbers (Sobaski, 2018). The focus on the needs of the patients promotes the realization of quality outcomes and not quantity outcomes are seen when the emphasis is on patient numbers.
The acuity-based staffing model is appropriate for the 30-bed unit because of several reasons. First, the model balances patient safety and productivity of the healthcare providers while optimizing organizational costs. The effective use of the model ensures that healthcare organizations use effectively the scarce human and financial resources to address the crucial needs of the patients (Meyer et al., 2020). An example is reducing the number of nursing staff needed if the unit has 30 patients awaiting discharge. In doing this, the costs that could have been incurred by focusing on numbers reduce significantly while the anticipated quality, safety, and efficiency of care are maintained in the unit.
The acuity-based staffing model also provides the unit manager the enhanced ability to identify and monitor productivity trends in the unit. Accordingly, the unit manager can use the model to measure unit productivity based on methods such as hours-per-work load recommendations and comparing it with the actual hours worked. They can also measure outcomes related to direct care and non-direct care outcomes related to the efficacy of staff in undertaking their roles. The assessment outcomes can be used to develop performance goals that should be achieved in the short, medium, and long-term in the unit (Dweik & Ahmad, 2018). Therefore, by measuring productivity, the unit manager can implement data-driven quality improvement initiatives to drive excellence in the unit.
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Quality Metrics
Quality metrics informed the determination of the acuity-based staffing model as appropriate for the unit. One of the quality metrics is cost. Healthcare organizations should ensure efficient utilization of financial resources in the patient care process. The scarce financial resources should be allocated with evidence-based data, which can be obtained when the acuity-based staffing model is adopted. Acuity-based staffing systems have been developed to provide managers with detailed insights into the costs that should be spent at any given time to meet the care needs of the patients (Penner, 2017).
The other quality metric that informed the selection of the staffing model is safety. The provision of care in the unit should ensure that patients are free from any form of harm. Often, provider and patient factors such as high workload, complex care needs, and burnout contribute to safety issues in the care process. Acuity-based staffing model ensures that the unit manager
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