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Identifying a Local Health Care Economic Issue
NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 Healthcare economics affects every individual and certainly every professional’s life and intimately it does so from the area of health economics and health care financing. The task of this report is to define a current and important economic issue in the healthcare industry, its purpose, outcome, and causes. There is one general economic issue in the delivery of health care, and that is, the lack of adequate staffing of health departments. This problem impacts diverse communities and populations, especially the ones that are minority in resource access. Lack of personnel happens when there is a scarcity of workers to provide health care probably due to increased population and heightened expectations of health care in a country to lacks enough workforce to man the sector. Examining the data from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), it was found that the shortage in nursing was set to worsen, particularly with the increasing population of the baby boomers and consequent increase in the demand for health care services (AACN, 2023).
The basis for selecting this issue lies in its applicability as a root cause to many healthcare consequences as well as established links to patient satisfaction and healthcare delivery effectiveness. Lack of staffing causes an overload of the remaining staff, high turnover, and poor outcomes of patients’ treatment. Something must be done to solve this problem because success in the management of healthcare facilities depends on the quality of care delivered to the workers.
NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 Health Care Economic Issue
Lack of human resources is one of the most concerning economic problems of different populations, especially in healthcare facilities serving underserved and rural populations. This situation develops when the number of people seeking health care services outstrips the supply of health care personnel and this limits the quality of services delivered. The AACN has estimated that the deficit of registered nurses in the United States will increase in the future as a result of demographic aging and the need for pop health services (AACN, 2023). This problem affects the rural settings by compromising quality because of understaffing especially when health care facilities are scarce. For instance, due to the lack of a skilled healthcare workforce, the small healthcare facilities in rural diesel communities have major challenges in attracting and retaining qualified healthcare professionals because they operate at a lower level of remuneration than those in urban centers. Thus, the current ratio of physicians is 3 per 100,000 people in urban areas (NRHA, 2020). This shortage means that the rural people will be made to wait longer to receive their health care, get less access to health care, and ultimately their health will get worse.
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The effects of insufficient staffing can be realized in various spheres of the organization’s activity. NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 Healthcare employees undergo more stress and job discontentment due to the enormous workload. This can lead to higher turnover rates and as a result, will add to the shortage of staff in an organization. For organizations, issues such as the inability to sustain organizational productivity and the safety of patients arise, Let alone the fact that extra money has to be spent in hiring additional staff or paying for overtime wages. To the patients particularly to those in rural areas, the shortage of healthcare workers results to inequalities and poor health that can be measured through incidences of chronic disease and mortality.
Choosing the Health Care Economic Issue
The decision to focus on inadequate staffing in health facilities as a critical economic decision is informed by the assertive and alarming impact that this factor has a direct and indirect impact on health care services. Short-staffed is another challenge that fuels health inequality since the affected facilities are often found in remote and rural areas. This was pointed out in AACN where it stated that the current nursing deficit and the aging of the population is likely to put a dent on the deficit as the health needs of the population rise. This is an important concern to be met if healthcare facilities are to deliver an adequate standard of care and manage a workforce that is not precipitated by the health issues associated with the workplace.
NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 personal experiences as well as values have been instrumental in the selection of this issue. Through my work experience in the health care field, I have realized the ill consequences that come with understaffing in the health facility. studies also discern that higher levels of working stress result in job demotivation among nurses and other healthcare employees. This also has ramifications for their health as well as impacts on patient outcomes where patient wait times are longer, medical errors are higher, and patient satisfaction is lower.
Health Care Economic Issue
Short-staffing in healthcare facilities and its impact on me, the organization, fellow staff, and the wider community is a problem that has affected me in many ways. Concerning this economic problem, diverse people of low socio-economic status experience more adverse effects: they experience worsened health and restricted access to health care. Within my working environment in the health care system, deficient staffing has a great influence on what I do daily. Due to the rise in the patient-to-staff ratio, it implies that one has to attend to as many patients as possible, thus working for many hours, stressed and also less satisfied with the job. NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 environment provides enormous challenges in ensuring that higher standards of care are offered to the patients as required, thus leading to moral and empathetic suffering amongst the healthcare professionals. Due to the pressure of dealing with so many patients and providing quality care in those circumstances, there is increased fatigue and mistakes that adversely affect the safety of the patients and their care.
NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 Organizational Implications
Grouped under the organizational implications is the availability of sufficient staffing that hinders the functionality of healthcare organization. The cost of having temporary staff or having to pay extra wages to workers exerts some pressure on the organization’s budgets since many resources are channeled to meeting this requirement rather than other areas like procuring and upgrading various gears and equipment and providing different training sessions for the staff. Similarly, the labor turnover that results from burnout and general job satisfaction in the workforce translates to higher costs in recruiting and training and poses a risk to the organization’s stability. Such a change in a team’s composition interferes with the creation of a well-rounded and seasoned staff that is critical in providing high-quality services to patients.
Contributing to the Need to Address the Economic Issue
From the analysis of various literature, one can deduce that the shortage in the staffing of healthcare facilities is caused by several gaps which include educational bottlenecks, inadequate funding, and workforce planning. This is because nursing and medical schools cannot produce the desired number of trained healthcare professionals and there is a shortage in the available workforce to cater to the increasing population’s health needs. NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 AACN stated that more students are interested in nursing education and training; however, colleges and universities cannot accommodate them, and many applicants with qualifications are rejected because of the shortage of faculty members, clinical sites, classrooms, and money to support these programs.
This educational disconnection is then complemented by the chronic underinvestment in healthcare facilities especially in the rural and other unfashionable regions. These facilities, in particular, encounter the problem of setting low salaries and favorable conditions for the employees’ work. Thus, they function with severe personnel deficits as a longstanding issue that affects the health of patients and their results. According to data from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), it has been established that rural facilities offer a lower number of healthcare practitioners per capita than urban ones, which creates substantial inequalities in access to care and health outcomes (HRSA, n. d. ).
Conclusion
In conclusion of NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 , Lack of personnel is a big emerging problem of the healthcare economic situation which affects both the workers in the field and the recipients of the treatment. This not only impacts the quality of care delivered but also accentuates the existing inequities of healthcare services and their price in the population especially for ethnic and socio-economically vulnerable populations. Scarce funding, poor workforce planning, high turnover rates, and inadequate training have continued to result in staff shortages, workers’ stress, and burnout, as well as a decline in staff-patient ratios that harm the quality of care.
Consequences of poor staffing reach out to high pressure on healthcare workers, fiscal costs of organizations, as well as to patients. These populations are the most at risk as they have to wait longer for their diagnosis, receive less specialized care, and have higher mortality rates. Overcoming it requires a multifaceted strategy that involves such things as raising investments in health care education, better coordination of workforce development, and strengthening of support for the facilities of the health care industry. Thus, by closing these gaps, it is possible to strive for an improved system of healthcare provision that would address the needs of different population groups more effectively.
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