Analysis of Measurement to Improve Quality Care

NUR 716
September 12, 2015
Analysis of Measurement to Improve Quality Care In today’s dynamic health care environment, it is essential to recruit nurses to organizations that provide them with adequate resources and support, in order to retain them in the organization (vanWyngeeren & Stuart, n.d.). A hospital-wide problem at the facility in which I am employed is the ability to retain nurses. According to our human resources department, our facility had a 30% turnover rate, for fiscal year 2014. Five percent of this has been involuntary, with the remaining 25% being voluntary. In order to calculate the turnover rate, which is done on a yearly basis, we take the number of employees who have left the facility voluntarily or involuntary and divide this number by the total number of employees. A turnover rate of 30% reflects negatively on our organization and our ability to provide competent and safe nursing care. The impact of a high turnover rate is revealed in workflow inefficiencies such as delays in delivering patient care, unhappy staff, and unhappy patients. All of these things lead to a decrease in quality of care, a decrease in our ability to keep our patients safe, and, ultimately, a decrease in patient satisfaction scores. When patient satisfaction scores are affected, the hospital is at risk of being unable to receive reimbursement from the United States government. A high turnover rate is also a financial burden for any organization. Every time an employee leaves and is replaced, there are costs associated with the process of losing the outgoing employee and hiring and training the incoming one. Training a new employee can cost about half of an unskilled worker’s salary to replace a lost employee. Replacing a technically skilled employee or a high-level manager can cost as much as three to five