Productivity Measurement
Elizabeth Garcia
Grand Canyon University: Health Care Accounting and Bills
Paula Arceneaux
March 9th, 2012
The nursing department of every healthcare organization plays an important role for the success of a hospital, because they cover 50 percent or more of the hospital’s labor budget. Therefore, it is important that the manager of the nursing department pays attention to the productivity of the job of every nurse and make sure that their work is running efficiently. A way to analyze the productivity of the nursing department is by internal benchmarking within the same organization or competitive benchmarking with an external organization. The information that will be used to …show more content…
It is a quick process because they have the ability to work with the same partners that share a similar system. Another reason of why the organization chooses this method is that there will not be issues of confidentiality and ethics between the comparison departments. This will help have an easy access to data of the other departments that will be used to perform the comparison and improve the productivity of the nurses. On the other hand, competitive benchmarking is more challenging, since this activity is being done directly with competitors in the same industry, this can hinder collaboration and not receive the necessary information to continue with the process of benchmarking. Although its difficulties, competitive benchmarking has its benefits that will allow the partners of both facilities to share their best practices and make the environment friendly. Worth mentioning that this method is recommended for large organizations because they have enough space and supplies to support quality for continues …show more content…
The data received after the benchmarking will indicate if the hospital has the appropriate number of nurses to provide patient care, this doesn’t promise quality care for patients. The data that will be comparing with the other department is the hours provided per patient daily (HPPD). To measure HPPD of the nurses, it is necessary to add the total number of nurses in a 24-hour period that were only engaged in patient care, and then multiply the results by the shift hours to calculate the total labor hours of the workers. The second step is for the part-time direct care workers, as before, add the part-time direct care total numbers in a 24-hour period and multiply by the hours worked. Add the total numbers obtained on step 1 and step 2 then divide by the number of patients present in the facility during work hours. The results given in step three provides the nursing hours per patient day, this help the nursing department know what ratio of nurses to patients is best for the