Hospital KPIs can help measure and improve the quality of healthcare services. Some metrics are generic, while others focus on clinical outcomes.
Patient mortality rate showcases the percentage of patients that die in a care facility’s care before they can be discharged. Hospitals should always aim for a lower number. Other metrics, such as the child immunization rate, measure the general population’s herd immunity, reducing strain on emergency response healthcare systems.
Patient Mortality Rate
Patient mortality rates are an essential indicator of the quality of healthcare services provided in a hospital. Higher mortality rates indicate poorer outcomes and lower quality of care. In comparison, lower death rates reflect more effective medical treatment and a more successful transition from the hospital to home or another type of healthcare facility.
Rates are usually “risk-adjusted,” which means they consider a patient’s health status and other factors.
This information may be publicized, encouraging hospitals to strive for better results by focusing on patient safety and providing the best possible care. It can also lead to improved referrals, which can help a hospital’s business and reputation.
Patient Room Turnover Rate
Keeping track of the number of days between one patient getting wheeled out of their room and another getting wheeled in is one way healthcare facilities can gauge efficiency. A high turnover rate can result in nurses and doctors rushing through care and leaving tasks unfinished, ultimately impacting the quality of service.
Hospitals like that managed by Rock Bordelon, President Allegiance Health Management may measure their patient room turnover using a variety of indicators, depending on the focus of their quality measurement programs. For example, measures assessing the effectiveness or patient safety will likely use disease-specific or sentinel event indicators.
Other quality indicators, such as patient satisfaction and patient-centredness, are more general. These indicators may use customer-reported information or standardized measurement tools. Regardless of the type of indicator used, all metrics should consider the context and the intended goal of the measure.
Staff-to-Patient Ratio
The staff-to-patient ratio is a crucial healthcare quality indicator that measures the number of nurses to patients. This metric helps hospitals maintain safe nurse-to-patient ratios, which can improve patient outcomes and reduce burnout in nursing.
Several seminal studies have shown that increased nurse staffing is associated with lower patient mortality rates and shorter lengths of stay. The result is that implementing safe staffing policies can lead to thousands of lives saved and hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings for hospitals.
Nurses cite guaranteeing staffing levels as one of the top incentives for coming to work each day. While many states lack specific minimum nurse-to-patient ratio laws, healthcare facilities can implement flexible staffing models that can adapt to hospital census and patient acuity.
Medical Equipment Utilization
Medical equipment plays a vital role in ensuring quality healthcare services. It enables accurate diagnoses and the performance of proper therapy and surgical procedures. Nevertheless, its effectiveness can be compromised by poor utilization and maintenance practices.
Structural quality indicators include the adequacy of facilities and equipment, staffing ratios, and qualifications of medical personnel. However, these indicators often need to be revised to connect to clinical processes and outcomes, making them less relevant than process or outcome-based measures.
Even though hospitals have invested billions in medical assets, many need to be more utilized. The main reason is that most of the equipment needs to be correctly located and tracked, resulting in staff spending too much time looking for the required tool. This, in turn, reduces productivity. Hence, effective management and tracking of medical equipment is essential.
Childhood Immunization Rate
Immunization is essential for protecting children and teens against preventable diseases. Routine vaccinations induce long-term immunity against serious, highly infectious diseases such as polio and measles and reduce the transmission of these diseases among children in their communities.
Vaccination rates declined during the COVID-19 pandemic and have not reached pre-pandemic levels. Researchers are concerned that these lower rates could have long-term physical, social, and financial costs.
Hospitals can improve childhood vaccine uptake by providing opportunistic immunization. However, only a few studies have quantified the impact of these opportunistic vaccination interventions on equitable vaccination coverage for children accessing hospitals compared to national and regional cohorts.
These studies found that trust and safety concerns, lack of availability of vaccines in the community, financial and logistical barriers, and discriminatory attitudes may be contributing factors to the differences in opportunistic immunization rates.
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