The Role of Nursing Home Administrator

A Nursing home is an institution that provides care and support for elderly individuals and the disabled. Nursing homes provide care for the residents who are immobile or cannot speak for themselves. Nursing homes may be government funded or privately owned by individuals. These institutions regardless of how they are supported they require a nursing home administrator to manage the running of the organization. The nursing home administration is the management aspect of medical and health services (Segel, Zisberg, Bakerjian & Zysberg, 2017). The nursing home administrator’s primary duties include the supervision of clinical and administrative functions, managing of finances, the medical care staff, and general medical equipment that are associated with home-based care management. They are also tasked with the responsibility of developing budgets, approving the capital expenditure of the organization and allocating funds to the various departments in the nursing home. The administrators also work with the medical staff in developing of the treatment plan for the residents. Also, they manage the support staff to ensure that the nursing home is well maintained and clean at all times.

Provision of regular training for the medical and non-medical personnel is the duty of the home administrator. As the administrator of the organization, they conduct performance reviews and appraisals to ensure the effectiveness of the staff and their application of work ethics in their duties. The nursing home administrator is responsible for the hiring, firing, and training of the staff, which include clinical, non-clinical and administrative personnel (Segel, Zisberg, Bakerjian & Zysberg, 2017). They ensure that the nursing equipment at the nursing home is well maintained and up to standards concerning the needs of the residents. They also provide that the residents are taken care of by referring them to specialized care when the need arises and informing the families of the residents their progress and conditions. Healthcare providers such as doctors, physicians, physiotherapists and nurses are employed in the nursing home, and non-healthcare providers such as accountants and human resource administrators work in the nursing home.

Issues in the field

Lack of enough resources for paying the staff is a significant issue for a nursing home administrator. The teamwork long hours and they fail to get compensated according to the nature of their work which has high demands. Issues on staffing currently and in future may continue being a challenge because of the low wages compared to high working requirements and needs. The nursing aides who perform the most work tend to leave the field in large numbers despite the amount of training that they receive. This leads labor shortage required to maintain the smooth running of the nursing home. Nursing homes lack fundings to support their services in the house due to low reimbursement levels. The other issue in the nursing home field is the increased number of residents and the changing roles that are required for management (Stuart, 2014). This makes the administrator job more challenging than it was initially. Another issue arising in the administration of nursing homes is their capacity to offer quality services for the residents due to the funds they receive. This is because inadequate care and support for the residents who are already in frail health may deteriorate their condition even more. The issues of prolonging life and the right to dignified living are being questioned due to the aspect of improvement in medical technology that in turn increases the chances of keeping someone alive even in a vegetative state.

Current issues in the Nursing Administrator’s job

The ongoing problem that is facing the profession is the inadequate number of nurses working in the business. The fewer number of nurses means that the cost of labor is higher. T nursing administrators must also compete with the existent hospitals and health institutions on how they can increase the number of staff working in their facilities. Therefore, the nurse administrators must establish relationships with the existent medical schools that can churn out the professionals that they need to handle their tasks. Additionally, the nurse administrators have to work on modalities of making the workplace favorable, other than the provision of essential materials and equipment that the employees need to retain the best talent.

Increased competition is also an emerging issue with the existent hospitals and clinics having to compete with the specialized clinics. With competition brings the need for advancing the levels of services while still maintain the rates, thus, lowering the profits that the hospital can get. Furthermore, the growth in the number of hospital facilities makes the specialized medical service provider prefer working on part time rather than full time. Such leads to a loss in trust by some potential clients owing to the stringent timelines that they have to keep, that is, when the specialized medical officer is available, to access the service that he or she needs.

Technology is also an emerging issue with regulations being set on the patient data ought to be managed by the hospitals and medical facilities. The use of electronic medical records is dominating the debate on how technology ought to be integrated into medical care. With the integration of technology comes to the issue of data security. There is need to ensure that the data that is stored has high integrity and cannot be accessed by hackers, owing to the confidentiality clause that hospitals have with their patients and the sensitivity of such information.

Future issue

A future issue that the nursing administrator has to face is benchmarking. Strategic planning must be core to the duties that are to be performed with the nursing administrator with the sole intent of increasing preference for the patient to be treated in the facilities that they manage. Hospitals not only compete in the employment of the well trained medical staff but also on the quality of services that they offer. A nurse administrator has to ensure that they provide a given specialized service that could be rare within the location where they operate, thus, making their services district and unique (Siegel, Leo, Young & Castle, 2014).

The next future issue is how the hospitals are preparing to meet the rising demands of the population. There is a paradigm shift from the current model where the patients pay for the service that they are offered to the model where they pay for the satisfaction that they receive from the facility. Therefore, there is need to provide playground for the children, baby changing services for the family caregivers taking care of their loved ones admitted and family support centers within the hospitals to increase the level of satisfaction that they receive. Such offer a basis for the hospitals to increase the premiums that they charge for their services.

The increase in the aging population within the United States is also an emerging issue. The aging population is often reliant on the Medicare service for the financing of their healthcare needs. The capping of the reimbursement that the government offers to hospitals through the Medicare program and the need to provide quality medical services is causing strain to the hospital management. The nurse administrator has a responsibility of ensuring that fiscal responsibility is taken into consideration when making decisions about the premiums that the patients have to pay as they are offered medical services (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 2015).

The nursing care standards are also an emerging issue. Nurses are increasingly held responsible for medical errors and could face prosecution for misdiagnosis or issuance of wrong medicine to the patient. As such, many staff often operate in fear and have no full confidence in what they do, thus, making many nurses to consider professions in other fields. Such reduces the number of staff available within the business and further compromising the quality of care that is offered by the medical facilities.

Nursing administrator in the United States of America and China

The nurse per 1000 population ratio is lower in China with China having one nurse per 1000 compared to nine nurses for 1000 population in the United States of America (Lu, Ruan, Xing, & Hu, 2015). As a result, the nurses in China are reported to record for work burn out, especially those working during the work shifts. There is a departure of nurses from China with the Chinese nurses having a preference to work in the advanced countries such as the United States. Therefore, what is evident is the high level of qualification for the nurses in the United States and the excellent working environment for the nurses in the United States as opposed to their counterparts in China (Lu, Ruan, Xing, & Hu, 2015). However, there is need to increase the number of nurses serving the existent population.

Conclusion

Notably, the role of the nursing administrators is crucial inefficient service delivery within the healthcare professions. The nursing administrators have to ensure that there is accountability amongst the medical staff and further providing that the facilities have enough stocks and adequate staff. However, there are emerging issues such as the need for specialized care, the need to integrate technology in the provision of health services and the need to offer skilled care. Comparatively, the work of the nursing administrators is more advanced in the United States compared to China. The nursing to patient ratio has been proven to be high in the United States compared to that in China. Such is responsible for the mass exodus of nurses from China to the countries with better working conditions such as China. Therefore, the nurse administrators in China need to seize the opportunity of employing nurses from China to feel the existent void owing to the shortage of nurses.

Additionally, nurse administrators need to work together with the training institutions to enable them to have ease of getting staff to work within their facilities. The use of strategic planning that identifies the area of specialized care that has not been addressed by the other medical services should act as the opportunity for the nursing administrators to explore, in a bid, to gain preference from their target market and increase the revenues earned by their facilities.

References

Boykin, A., & Schoenhofer, S. O. (2015). Theory of nursing as caring. Nursing theories and nursing practice, 341-356.
Lu, M., Ruan, H., Xing, W., & Hu, Y. (2015). Nurse burnout in China: a questionnaire survey on staffing, job satisfaction, and quality of care. Journal of nursing management, 23(4), 440-447.
Siegel, E. O., Leo, M. C., Young, H. M., & Castle, N. G. (2014). Nursing home administrator self-assessed preparedness. Health care management review, 39(3), 210-222.
Siegel, E. O., Zisberg, A., Bakerjian, D., & Zysberg, L. (2017). Nursing Home Administrator Quality Improvement Self-Efficacy Scale. Health care management review, 42(4), 328-340.
Stuart, G. W. (2014). Principles and Practice of Psychiatric Nursing-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.