Sarah Adams

Sarah Adams
Hi, Sarah. That was a great post. I totally agree with you that patient readmission is a great problem facing the health care sector yet it can be reduced. As you have put it, monitoring patients after discharge is one of the best strategies that can be employed to reduce the level of patient readmission. I would like to add that not all patient readmissions are preventable. There are some that are avoidable, while some are unavoidable owing to the level of seriousness of a patient’s health situation. Sometimes, patient admission is the best option as it may help save huge costs of patient monitoring especially where travelling expenses could be high.
In your budget for the patient monitoring program, I think the amount for staff education can be lower than $1000 annually if at all such programs as online education can be employed. It has be proven than online education, where different educational materials are posted to be accessed by all staff members, offers cheaper, flexible, and more convenient educational platform than the conventional ways of educating staff such as educational seminar (Gerkin, Taylor, & Weatherby, (2009). However, such a platform could be expensive in its initial set-up, but could be cheaper in the longrun. This could save your organization some substantial amount that could be diverted to other uses in improving the program even better. I think planning a budget should consider the most economical options.
Gerkin, Keri L. Taylor, Teri H. & Weatherby, Francene M. (2009). The Perception of Learning and Satisfaction of Nurses in the Online Environment. Journal for Nurses in Professional Development, 25 (1), E8- E13.
Diane Lawson
Hi Diane, I enjoyed reading your discussion. I agree with you that providing quality care that is cost effective, and of high quality and standard is necessary for patient satisfaction. To add to your discussion, I think that as much as health care organizations seek to reduce costs of operation by reducing patient readmissions and adopting hospital denials for an extended length of stay, it is important to consider patients’ beliefs and values (Koenig & Gates-Willia...