Student name

Capella University

NURS-FPX4005 Nursing Leadership: Focusing on People, Processes, and Organizations

Professor Name

Submission Date

Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal

The patient-centred care component that makes and guarantees the timely transitions through the hospital to home is discharge planning. The process timeliness hinders the increased number of hospital stays, lower bed capacity, and increased costs (Ibrahim et al., 2022). This proposal introduces an interdisciplinary initiative at the Mercy General Hospital, in which they can initiate daily discharge huddles. Communication and collaboration should be enhanced in the plan so that better discharges and flow of patients, as well as utilization of available resources, can be achieved.

Objective

The interdisciplinary plan would require the introduction of daily discharge planning huddles in the Mercy General Hospital using the SBAR (situation, background, assessment, and recommendation) communication framework. This intervention is aimed at reducing the time spent on discharge and improving patient flow. Effective multidisciplinary communication has been taken into account by the Joint Commission’s patient safety goal as the means to shorten the length of stay (LOS) and improve patient outcomes (Kelly & Cardy, 2023). This achievement will help realize the greater aim of the hospital to improve the coordination of care, maximize resource utilization and bed capacity.

Questions and Predictions

Question 1: What effect will daily interdisciplinary huddles have on patient discharge?

Answer 1: The average discharge period will change to 0.5 to 1 full day in three months due to the enhanced coordination and early identification of discharge barriers. As stated by Ibrahim et al. (2022), evidence-based multidisciplinary discharge teams follow up the changes in productivity and patient outcome with positive results using quantitative evidence.

Question 2: Is the SBAR model going to make the communication between departments more comprehensible?

Answer 2: The implementation of SBAR will reduce the instances of miscommunication by at least 25 percent. SBAR enhances standardized communication and reduces communication failures (Coolen et al., 2020).

Question 3: What is the impact of the new discharge planning process on patient satisfaction?

Answer 3: Within the first quarter, the score of the indicator on patient satisfaction with discharge information and readiness will increase by at least 15 points. Empirical evidence of the efficiency of transformational leadership in the strengthening of interdisciplinary working together harmony, personnel content, and patient safety simultaneously is also available (Broome, 2024).

Question 4: Can the plan be scaled across additional units in the hospital if successful?

Answer 4: Yes, when pilot results are successful at the beginning, then the program can be expanded throughout the hospital within six months. The projected time of discharge within the electronic health record (EHR) provides an opportunity to reduce the LOS and successfully present the discharge planning to the multidisciplinary team (Kelly & Cardy, 2023).

Change Theories and Leadership Strategies

Mercy General Hospital will use Lewin’s change theory to guide communication in a way that the daily discharge planning huddles can be implemented successfully as an organization change process. The three phases of the model, such as unfreezing, changing, and refreezing, as presented by Ahmed et al. (2022), are appropriate to the project goals. The unfreezing stage will be conducted through the presentation of data on delayed discharges and unsatisfied patients to the personnel. The changing phase will involve training, as the introduction of the SBAR structure and piloting will take place in several units. And finally, there will be the refreezing, which will involve consolidation of the huddle process with the provision of regular feedback and better discharge timeline reward.

In the same vein, the transformational leadership idea will also be applied to support the buy-in and to assist the complete engagement of the team. Transformational leaders inspire people to follow them by declaring their vision, establishing trust and empowering team members (Broome, 2024). Within the example of Mercy General, the top members of the staff, following the example of a transformational nurse leader or discharge coordinator, can be used to motivate the staff through linking the initiative to better patient care and staff processes. Rewarding the work of the team and announcing the first success will improve loyalty and ensure speed as well. The combination of these approaches will contribute to better coordination and a high probability of the successful decrease in delays in patient discharge and better patient outcomes.

Team Collaboration Strategy

A cross-functional team must collaborate effectively to achieve the objective of reducing delays in discharges at the Mercy General Hospital. The individuals who will be working in this team will include nurses, physicians, case managers, social workers, and a discharge coordinator. The navigation of the care plan, physicians, advanced practice providers, case managers, and other key stakeholders possess valuable insights into the aspects of effective discharge planning (Whitney et al., 2024). This is a working path that the discharge coordinator will oversee the entire activity and formulation of discharge efficiency goals. The partnership will resemble the best practices that involve standardization in communication, role clarity, and decision-making.

SBAR enhances consistency and reduces the errors of message and builds trust among workers (Coolen et al., 2020). The practices should be backed by the encouragement of accountability, open communication and feedback that can be enhanced at Mercy General. Ibrahim et al.’s (2022) study presents a practical instance of such a technique because the researchers demonstrated that structured discharge rounds reduced the duration of stay and employee satisfaction. Treating the same evidence-based approach, Mercy General will enhance the interaction between the representatives of different departments, and the quality of patient flow and care will be improved objectively.

Required Organizational Resources

The available staff nurses, physicians, case managers, and social workers will be applied to the implementation of daily discharge planning huddles at the Mercy General Hospital, due to the implementation of 15 to 20 minutes to communicate via structured communication activities. No one will be employed, and the scenario with huddles and the time spent on them will occupy part of the other work; hence, there will be a certain modification of the working process. The access to EHR that is already available requires meeting rooms. The hospital using EHR and making small upgrades or changes to transfer of care costs the hospital less than 4000 on the cost of information technology (Koppel, 2022). These costs are periodic, and they can be considered in the departmental budgets.

The non-adherence to the plan will result in the hospital wasting more resources. A delay in the discharges disrupts the availability of beds, extended stay and may result in new patient delays. This is not only a problem for patient satisfaction but also raises the cost of the operation. Ibrahim et al. (2022) also included that the delays in discharges are among the reasons contributing to the increased number of hospital-acquired conditions and ceased contribution to inappropriate resource utilization, which additionally results in the emergence of an increase in the deficit. Having comparatively minimal investment in the evidence-based collaboration and communication strategies, Mercy General could enhance patient flow, increase the inpatient spending, and raise the utilization of human and tangible resources. Due to the failure to address the issue of discharge delays, prolonged shortages in reimbursements, the decline of the financial resources, and the worsening of the level of care delivery, one may anticipate the appearance of these issues. The new one is viable and sustainable, but at a lower cost.

Conclusion

The provided interdisciplinary plan will reduce the wait in the discharges using the framework of the daily huddles at Mercy General Hospital. It is also evidence-based based on the strategies of transformational leadership and good collaboration. The plan lacks a huge financial engagement in terms of available resources, and enhances patient care and operational effectiveness. Provided it is successfully implemented, it will help achieve improved patient outcomes, reduced hospital stays, and less efficient resource needs in the organization.

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