NR 529 Module 6 Assignment_Financial Management of A Safe Staffing Quality Improvement Project

Financial Management of A Safe Staffing Quality Improvement Project Financial competency is a necessary part of any healthcare leadership role within an organization. As a functioning business, healthcare is driven by costs. According to The World Health Organization (2022), when finances are distributed in a timely manner, quality patient care and adequate staffing can be coordinated. When leaders in healthcare fully understand their organizations finances, they can monitor resources, accurately allocate funds, and advocate for budgets. Safe nurse staffing ratios are a current concern in the world of healthcare that led to patient, nurse, and organizational consequences. This report will review a safe staffing quality improvement project, how it contributes to safe and high quality patient centered care, and its potential effects on organizational costs. Furthermore, there will be discussion of this project’s financial needs, variables that could affect the project’s costs, and strategies that a nurse leader can use to approach constraints to the process. Project Problem Statement The purpose of this proposed quality improvement project is to improve nurse to patient ratios while answering the question of what the effects of working with lower nurse to patient ratios compared to higher nurse to patient ratios are on patient safety and satisfaction as well as occupational stress, turnover rates, and organizational costs. More specifically, the project would involve creating an interprofessional team, developing a patient acuity tool and nurse assignment guide, modifying the EHR to reflect acuities and staffing, creating and distributing education on the project, consistent observations and open lines for feedback, and hopefully a proposed permanent change to organizational nurse staffing policy. This subject is important because poor findings support the assumption that an implemented patient acuity and safe staffing project will help to alleviate cost concerns. Financial Management It is not uncommon to see that projects or studies require expenses or financial coverage to meet their objectives. This safe staffing quality improvement project fortunately may meet its milestones with little to no cost other than those associated with salary. Organizations provide their employees with an email account that is typically set up with team meeting and sharing capabilities as well as calendars; these are free to employees and can be utilized at all meetings, planning, development, feedback, evaluation, and discussion points of the project timeline. The main cost that comes into play is that of covering professional leave or employee time compensation; these costs will be based on the salary level or hourly pay rate of the employee and length of work time but are difficult to estimate at this point without established team members and knowledge of pay rates. Another possible foreseeable cost for this project could be a video chat program like Zoom that may need to be utilized for quarantine, time constraints, or location dilemmas to ensure the greatest number of involved team members. Zoom can cost anywhere from $150 to $250 annually depending on the package needed or number of participants. Another possible cost could be that of office supplies to copy