Quality and Cost Measurements

Quality and Cost Measurements
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Quality and Cost Measurements
The nurse practitioners have a vital role in the provision of affordable as well as quality care to their patients. Nevertheless, they face a lot of challenges as they try to accomplish their duties. These challenges are consequently a hinderance go their efficiency and effectiveness. They are expected to reveal their performance indicators and also measure the quality of the services they provide to their patients.
Quality measures help in the comparison of the effectiveness and efficiency of the nurse practitioners when delivering healthcare services against the standards that have been set. Some measures used to show quality standard in health care may include patient satisfaction and safety and experiences of healthcare providers. One of the institutions that help to oversee that hospitals measure and enforce quality standards is the AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). Measures of quality are very important in healthcare sectors as they help to guarantee safety of patients and also facilitate maximum utilization of resources. They also help to measure and address inconsistencies in provision of quality care, promote answerability by insurance providers and to find out the initiatives that can help in the improvement of healthcare.
In contrast, performance measures are indicators that are used to examine how a hospital is achieving its goals. The are several measures of performance used for determination of NP productivity that one can identify in the article by Rhodes, Bechtle, and McNett (2015).

They include: participation in leadership activities, the patient satisfaction reports, number of publications, attendance of staff meeting and number of students guided by the APRNs as well as the time used when guiding them.
In my opinion incentive payment for care helps to improve the quality of healthcare in hospitals as they are intended to encourage medical practitioners and also improve their productivity. A model that can be utilized in health facilities is the Pay-for-performance model that helps to reward those that are more productive than the rest financially by comparing them against the set goals. External motivators may help to positively influence the behavior of medical experts thus helping in the achievement of high-value care in the health facilities.

Reference
Rhodes, C. A., Bechtle, M., & McNett, M. (2015). An incentive pay plan for advanced practice registered nurses: impact on provider and organizational outcomes. Nursing Economics, 33(3), 125-131.