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Introduction: The scenario presented involves a patient who visits the emergency department for low back pain. The patient undergoes an MRI, which is delayed due to short-staffing and inadequate pre-certification. The assignment requires using data from the Hospital Compare website to analyze the measures that affect the facility in the scenario.
Answer: The measures listed in the data table provided in the assignment include Emergency Department (ED) 1st-time visit, ED average time before being seen by a healthcare professional, and Hospital Acquired Infection. The first measure indicates the percentage of patients receiving care who are first-time ED visitors, while the second measure shows the average time taken before patients are attended to by a healthcare professional in the ED. The third measure relates to the prevalence of hospital-acquired infections among Medicare beneficiaries at the facility.
Apart from Hospital Compare, two other sources useful in finding public information about facilities are the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report and the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. The first source provides information on nationwide healthcare quality and disparities, including details on the quality of patient care, while the latter is a comprehensive database detailing hospital care utilization data.
Of the measures presented in the data table, ED 1st-time visit is the most relevant to the scenario. A high percentage of first-time ED visitors indicates poor management of preventative care and poor health education in the community. This measure is critical because if people are well informed about preventive care and have better access to primary care services, there is a lower likelihood of inappropriate visits to the ED. The availability of alternative care options may lead to ED overcrowding and longer wait times. The facility in the scenario may suffer from low-quality care delivery and decreased patient satisfaction due to the high percentage of first-time ED visitors.