Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste
Part 1: Valuing diversity
Cultivating workforce diversity should be one of the biggest priorities in any organization. In fact, the power of diversity should not be misunderstood or ignored as it has both internal and external impacts on the organization. When talking about diversity, it is important to consider the differences represented between people to include language, hometown, culture, demographic, age and race. All these differences that exist between individuals and people are categories of diversity. Diversity and inclusion is the path for success in any organization. It is not enough for an organization to hire diverse populations; the organization must go a step forward ensuring that the hired diverse population is included (Stanley, 2017) Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
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What is diversity?
All the differences between individuals and people are categories of diversity. So, what is diversity? Is it about the color, age or race? Or, is diversity about any differences, such as differences in culture, background, geography, knowledge, skills, thought, ideas or opinions? All these are diversity. In fact, diversity is anything that sets one individual apart from another individual (Stanley, 2017).
Within any organization, diversity presents an opportunity to include different opinions, backgrounds and ideas in the mix when developing and generating new ideas and solutions to challenges, and making key decisions. It is about creating a culture that fosters innovation, embracing new ideas, and encouraging variety of thought by valuing the differences presented by diversity. Any organization that deals with outside clients/customers, must acknowledge that they (clients) represent different cultural perspectives, demographics, geographies and so forth. So, the best way for an organization to support its needs is to reflect these same diversity as representation in the workforce and teams (Finkelman, 2019) Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
What is not diversity?
Compliance does not necessary indicate diversity since compliance is transactional and reactive. Through associating diversity with compliance, it would be perceived that diversity is a source of challenge or trouble or is a burden. Also, diversity is not about sensitivity or tolerance, all issues that come from a dysfunctional culture or lack of leadership. In addition, diversity is not about certain groups of people receiving special treatment. Besides that, diversity is not about charity. It is not about being charitable by helping those who are less fortunate. Definitely, it is not about making things better for only a specific group of people. Rather, diversity is about fully deploying the variety of available resources to improve outcomes and benefit everyone. It is about full representation (Finkelman, 2019)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Why care about diversity?
The term diversity refers to every single way in which people are different as cultures, groups and individuals. Every person has a worldview made up of ‘givens’ and individual constructs of reality that influence how the individual filters experiences and interprets the world and their place in the world. Caring about diversity is important for five reasons. First, it helps in meeting ethical and legal requirements. Second, it enables equitable participation in the society. Third, it is conducive to adaptability, innovation and creativity in the organization and society. Fourth, it helps the personnel and other stakeholders to build a stronger sense of wellbeing and identity. Fifth, it helps in improving outcomes as the diverse perspectives, interests, abilities and strengths are understood and supported (Stanley, 2017)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
A lack of diversity and absence of representation in any organization means that the organization would miss out on the benefits of diversity. It would miss out on the key opportunities to optimize its operations and activities because it does not have the talent diversity that is necessary to innovate at a competitive level. The workforce should represent the customers, future customers and future employees, and business partners as they are the same people the organization want to do business with. Also, organizations want to do business with other organizations that have diversity as they would be representing them even as they indicate an understanding of their values and culture. Besides that, diversity is beneficial for the organization. Having a diverse workforce expands the organization’s creativity, increases the ability to cope with change, improves relationship with the community, improves responsiveness to increasingly diverse work of clients, and contributes to increased productivity and retention (Finkelman, 2019)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
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If it is accepted that organizations and clients want to do business with those that they like, know and trust, then this means that the workforce in the organization should reflect the communities and clients it serves. Organizations that are able to have diversity in their workforce will translate that into diversity of experience and thoughts that driver innovation. Any organization that believes in doing what is right for the community, people and clients, and using that to guide its vision and practice will actively hire a diverse workforce. In having a diverse workforce, the organization would signal to that that inclusion is a priority. This is both messaging and visibility. With diverse voices, the organization would enjoy insight, depth and texture that can help it innovate solutions and discover new, untapped opportunities. Overall, building a diverse workplace has quantifiable benefits to an organization as the investments made would pay dividends over the long-term (DeNisco & Beauvais, 2020)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Building diversity
It is clear that diversity is important. As such, where can an organization start in including diversity. The first step is to understand what is and is not diversity. This makes the organization more aware of diversity as an area of opportunity. The second step is to think about diversity in partnerships, communications, mentorship, talent development, recruitment and other human resource activities (DeNisco & Beauvais, 2020).
An organization must start somewhere in including diversity. A good start is at diversity awareness and understanding. Any organization’s success at achieving diversity will be reflected when it no longer asks if it is diverse enough. That is because diversity will not be something remarkable, and will instead turn into a norm. In the context of an organization’s workplace, valuing diversity implies maximizing the potential of all personnel, recognizing the unique contributions that individual personnel with many types of differences make, and creating a work environment and respects and includes differences. Ultimately, the goal of including diversity in an organization is to accurately reflect the population of the customers and communities it is trying to serve in all their dimensions (DeNisco & Beauvais, 2020)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
There are five steps that an organization can undertake to build diversity. First, educating the personnel, leaders and stakeholders about diversity. This training and education gives them the tools to excel as a diverse workforce, even as they understand that improve of diversity. Second, evaluating the current workforce. This helps in determining where the organization stands, where it falls short on terms of diversity, and if it has unconscious biases that impact the ability to reach diversity targets. Third, implement the necessary changes in human resource activities, such as the hiring process. This incorporates inclusive approaches into human resource activities, such as using gender neutral terms, refraining from using gendered descriptors, and eliminating biases in the job descriptions. Fourth, promoting flexibility in the working arrangements. Without flexibility, certain people would be at a disadvantage from the get go, such as single parents choosing between employment and child care, especially if the job takes them at a considerable distance away from home. Remote working options and flex-time can be helpful in this regard. Fifth, setting diversity goals. This is important when facing institutional bias that would have the organization paying only lip service to the idea of diversity. Formal, measurable organization goals for diversity can help in undertaking tangible steps towards achieving diversity (Joel, 2018)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Part Two: Efficiency
There is a great interest in ensuring that health care resources are efficiently used. In this case, efficiency is synonymous with efficacy and effectiveness. Efficiency refers to acting in an economical way. Efficacy refers to the capacity of an intervention under controlled or ideal conditions. Effectiveness refers to the ability of an intervention to have a meaningful effect in normal conditions. A significant problem in the clinical environment, particularly with regards to primary care, is that it is difficult to match resources to demands and needs. That is because resources are limited, particularly the providers and their time. One approach for ensuring that resources are assigned to areas in which they would derive the most benefits is to increase the efficiency with which resources are assigned (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Framing the problem
Every health care system around the world is struggling with a lack of economic sustainability and rising costs. This creates a need for the available resources to be used in the most efficient way. Having an efficient health care system implies that high levels of performance (output, outcome) are achieved relative to the inputs used (money, time, resources). Efficiency has traditional been measured in physical units per resources used. However, within the health care industry, achieving efficiency extends to maximizing all the performance per unit of invested input, an issue of interest to health care stakeholders. This makes it clear that in addition to health services that present physical units (admissions, drugs, visits), efficiency is also measured for health outcomes that present abstract units (such as clinical outcomes, functional status and preventable deaths). This shows that efficiency must explicitly identify the inputs used to produce the output of interest. The inputs are measured as counters (physical inputs) and/or monetized (financial/abstract inputs) (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Our health care system is characterizing by high and rising costs as well as gaps in access, equity, safety and quality. This creates a need to look for ways to reduce waste, increase efficiency and allocate resources in order to improve value. Also, clients are seeking guidance on how to maximize the value of their money, particularly since they are expose to more information. In this environment, a health care organization must help to set up and apply the concept of efficiency as regards reducing unnecessary costs and waste while maintaining or improving quality. Before making a decision on how to improve efficiency, it is important to consider the maximum potential gains that could be achieved if inefficiency is reduced (Sherwood & Barnsteiner, 2021)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Improving efficiency
Any organization is likely to produce waste that comes in many forms with negative impacts on the organization, human health and environment. Resource management challenges result in negative client satisfaction, last minute unplanned costs that reduce profit margins, resources with sub-optimal skills being matched to projects, work delays, and personnel time being under-utilized. Addressing this concern requires that resource efficiency be improved. This involved reducing costs, and increasing productivity and performance (Sherwood & Barnsteiner, 2021)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
There are eight ways to improve efficiency in an organization. First, reviewing who manages resources. Teams are preferable to individuals managing the resources. Also, up-to-date methods should be used in resource management. Second, building an up-to-date knowledge of the resource pool available to the organization to include what skills are available and what they are available. The knowledge base should include availability, constraints, skills and location of all the personnel in the organization resource pool. This (rather than segmented/separate resource pools) increases the potential for blending complementary experiencing and skills to create the best teams. Also, this helps in uncovering time that is locked up and can be freed. Third, managing the resource pool in line with the market to ensure that the organization has the right mix of skills to deliver what the clients want. This involves looking at what resources are valuable, market trends, training and development, and automation and technology (Sherwood & Barnsteiner, 2021)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Fourth, reviewing the use of outside resources, particularly contractors. Many health care organizations use a mixture of freelancers, partners and contractors in resource engagements to bolster the talent pool. For instance, if the organization has a shortage of nurses, it can temporarily bring in agency nurses to ease the shortage. Relying too much on outside resources is an indication that resourcing is too reactive as the demand would be seen late and resourcing done late so that outside resources are not used strategically. If outside resources are to be used, for whatever reason (such as cost-effective solution or offering supplementary skills that are not part of core business offering), then having a professional service automation (PSA) tool that presents the real-time effects of using outside resources instead of inside resources (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2020)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Fifth, looking for recruitment opportunities. Getting the best talent is a process that involves finding the right person, hiring that person and onboarding, all activities that take time. The organization should not recruit on a start-stop basis. Instead. It should aggregate personnel demands from forecasts and use that to guide hiring decisions thereby providing a solid basis for recruitment. This ensures that the organization is able to get highly skilled personnel and place them in appropriate positions quickly (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2020).
Sixth, collaborations and communication. Having an open line of communication ensures that there is appropriate planning as upcoming demand for resources is anticipated. With greater visibility of resource planning, the organization can focus its efforts on areas where the resources are available or underutilized (Masters, 2020).
Seventh, allocating resources as early as possible. Collaboration and communication helps to break the practice of assigning resources only at the last moment. This misses out on the opportunity to me more proactive in ensuring that the best resources are in place. Planning ahead helps to bring the resources together, and ensure that they are complementary. Also, it finds an optimum balance of the less experienced and more experienced personnel, which maximizes resource margin and utilization while training the junior personnel. This suits health care teams well as they would value working in a more planned environment where they are well prepared for what they would be working on (Masters, 2020)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
Eighth, having fixed deadlines. It is more difficult to effectively allocate resources if the deadlines are continually shifting. If the deadline is extended, then the resources would be required for longer so that they cannot be assigned to other areas while resourcing becomes reactive even as the organization plugs the gaps with what is available even if this means turning to expensive outside resources. In essence, a fixed deadline allows for a scheduled milestone upon which much else in the organization depends on. For instance, if a patient is re-hospitalized for an infection acquired in the facility, then the organization may be unable to ask for reimbursement so that the personnel are without billable hours, meaning that effective utilization and revenue are likely to skip too (Masters, 2020)Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
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Summary
Valuing diversity is an important issue in managing quality and risk within a health care organization. Diversity is anything that sets one individual apart from another individual. It is about representation, and not about compliance, sensitivity, tolerance, or charity. It is important for meeting ethical and legal requirements, enables equitable participation, conducive to adaptability, innovation and creativity, builds stronger sense of wellbeing and identity, and improves outcomes. Building diversity involves defining diversity as a concept and including diversity in all organization activities. This is achieved by educating stakeholders about diversity, evaluating current workforce, implementing changes in human resource activities, promoting flexibility in working arrangements, and setting diversity goals.
Efficiency is important in identifying waste and resource management. It focuses on acting in an economical way by matching resources to demands and needs as resources are limited. Efficiency can be improved by reviewing who manages resources, building an up-to-date knowledge of the resource pool available to the organization, managing the resource pool in line with the market, review the use of outside sources, look for recruitment opportunities, collaborations and communication, allocating resources as early as possible, and having fixed deadlines Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste.
References
DeNisco, S. M. & Beauvais, A. M. (2020). Advanced Practice Nursing: Essential Knowledge for the Profession (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
Finkelman, A. (2019). Professional Nursing Concepts: Competencies for Quality Leadership (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
Joel, L. A. (2018). Advanced Practice Nursing: Essentials for Role Development (4th ed.). F.A. Davis Company.
Masters, K. (2020). Role Development Professional Nursing Practice (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
Sherwood, G., & Barnsteiner, J. (Eds.) (2021). Quality and Safety in Nursing: A Competency Approach to Improving Outcomes (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2020). Public Health Nursing: Population-Centered Health Care in the Community (10th ed.). Elsevier, Inc.
Stanley, D. (2017). Clinical Leadership in Nursing and Healthcare: Values into Action (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Zaccagnini, M., & Pechacek, J. M. (Eds.) (2019). The Doctor of Nursing Practice Essentials: A New Model for Advanced Practice Nursing (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. Summative Assessment: Manage Quality and Identify Waste