Running head: NEEDS ASSESSMENT CYCLE

Needs Assessment Cycle

Sirena Banks
CUR/528
April 26, 2015
Susan Kater

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Needs Assessment Cycle

Meditech is an integrated information system that enables health care providers to track a
patients history and/or monitor ongoing treatment of chronic health problems, regardless of the
patients whereabouts. Meditech also provides immediate access to patients medical records,
which can be used to devise treatments. Among the 165 HCA (Hospital Corporation of America)
facilities more than half of the Nursing managers are complaining about the RNs, LPNs and
CNAs speed and accuracy while using the Meditech system. The lack of speed is slowing down
the quality of service to patients and the accuracy of data and documents are causing an increase
in accidents.
Training Identified for Needs Assessment
Based on nursing managers complaints with nursing (RNs, LPNs and CNAs)
employees using the Meditech systems, the HCA (Hospitals Corporation of America)
organization has allowed the training team to put together a needs assessment to identify and
isolate the problem that the RNs, LPNs and CNAs are having when it comes to the quality of
service and the accuracy of data when using the Meditech system. The training team will also
identify how to decrease the negligent behavior. Once the need is identified the training team will
then decide on the best way to conduct the improvements.
Needs Assessment Purpose
The purpose of the Meditech needs assessment is to gather information and valuable
evidence towards the organizations discrepancies. The assessment will also address issues
regarding the effectiveness of the nurses quality of service to patients and the inaccuracy of data
when using the Meditech systems. The needs assessment will enable the HCA (Hospitals
Corporation of America) training team the opportunity to identify the strengths and weaknesses

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within the HCA (Hospitals Corporation of America) facilities among the nurses. The training
team will also decide on corrective actions towards the known issues. It will also include
materials, budgets, and frequency to continue the outcome on training for improvement.
Level of Assessment
The HCA (Hospitals Corporation of America) training team plan to conduct a three level
training needs assessment. The first method will be an organizational assessment. This
assessment will evaluate the organization level of performance when using the meditech systems.
The training team will review the skills, knowledge, and abilities of all Nurses (RNs, LPNs and
CNAs); they will also determine weaknesses, strengths and competencies while deciding what is
required to alleviate the initial problem. Within this assessment various factors will be reviewed,
such as, technology health care trends, economy and demographics (Training and
Development, n.d.).
The second level assessment will be an Occupational assessment. The assessment will
examine the skills, knowledge, and abilities for all Nurses (RNs, LPNs and CNAs) within the
HCA (Hospitals Corporation of America) organization versus all Nurses (RNs, LPNs and
CNAs) thats affected by the known discrepancy. The training team will then identify which
occupational discrepancies and or gaps that exist. They will also examine how to eliminate the
known discrepancies and or gaps by either creating trainings and or introducing new ways to
work (Training and Development, n.d.).
The third level assessment will be an individual assessment. The assessment will analyze
how well each individual nurse does the job as well as determine the individuals capacity to do
new or different work. This method will allow the trainers to see what employees need training
and the best executions for the employees (Training and Development, n.d.).

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In Addition to the three levels of assessment the trainers will also conduct surveys with
nursing managers, supervisors and department heads. Data also will be collected from patients
who may have been affected by the quality of service. This will be done by simply gathering all
the patients from the affected facilities and nurses and sending out a quality of service survey.
By using multiple methods and seeking input from multiple stakeholders, the trainers will have
the opportunity to come up with a convergent analysis that confirms the need for the intended
training through the convergence of data collected from the multiple sources (Royse, Thyer, &
Padgett, 2010).
Stakeholders
The Stakeholders who are interested in the HCA (Hospitals Corporation of America)
training team decisions and the evidence used to support the organizations decisions as well as
the clinical impact of the decisions include: patients, caregivers, providers, advocates and
advocacy groups, researchers, policy makers, healthcare industry representatives and elected
officials.
Budget/Available Resources
The HCA (Hospitals Corporation of America) organization has a training budget in place
for yearly assessments. The funds will cover all necessary materials required to conduct the
needs assessment as well as any overheads such as; trainers overtime pay and employee training
pay. The budget will also cover additional ongoing training if needed.
Time Allotted for Conducting the Needs Assessment
The HCA (Hospitals Corporation of America) organization has allotted six months to the
training team to complete the needs assessment. During the six months the training team will
distribute all surveys to stakeholders: patients, managers, supervisors, affected and non-affected

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nurses (RNs, LPNs and CNAs) of the noted issues, gather all necessary data, conduct
interviews, receive completed survey instruments and analyze all results. After the six months of
the assessment the training team must present information and put together a training course or
provide solutions to individuals work patterns.
Specific Information Being Measured by the Needs Assessment
The training team has to measure two separate issues with the HCA (Hospitals
Corporation of America) facility nurses (RNs, LPNs and CNAs). The first issue that needs to
be evaluated is the speed in which the nurses (RNs, LPNs and CNAs) are using the Meditech
system and how its affecting the quality of service. Surveys measuring patients wait time and
the level of care received will be mailed to all patients from the last six months. The surveys will
be sent from the affected facilities as well as non-affected facilities to measure the differences.
Employee surveys will be given to nurses, nurse managers and department leads to measure what
is expected in the Meditech speed. The training team will also measure the performance of the
nurses to evaluate whether speed is indeed the reason for the lack of quality of service.
The second issue that needs to be evaluated is data and document accuracy. The training
team will review and research data from the last six months that shows an increase in data
mistakes such as wrong medications entered, wrong spellings of names, and incorrect
abbreviations of notes. This information will be matched against other facilities to locate
similarities or differences.
Does This Information Already Exist or Must It Be Obtained
There are two issues in which the training team will be evaluating. The first issue is the
lack of speed the nurses are demonstrating which is impacting the quality of service. In order to
determine if the speed has anything to do with the quality of service the training team want to

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find out if the quality of service has gone down and what are the issues associated with the
quality of service. Next the training team would like to take that data to see if it has any
correlations to the speed in which the nurses use the Meditech system. Because this information
does not already exist it must be obtained through surveys and individual assessments
The second issue is data and document accuracy. In order to determine this information
the training team will pull the data from the Meditech program and the Hospital computer
systems. There is documented data when wrong medications are given and when other
information is entered wrong. The training team will measure data within the last six months
versus six months prior. The data will then be analyzed against data from other facilities to
measure the increases or decreases to pinpoint if indeed there is a data discrepancy issue.
Because this information already exists no information is needed to obtain, only research need to
be done to pull the information.
Instruments or Methodology to Measure the Effectiveness of the needs assessment
Once the needs assessments are done the HCA (Hospitals Corporation of America)
training team will have gathered enough information and data to conduct training. The training
team will measure the effectiveness of the training in several ways. The Meditech training has
four parts, throughout the training there will be formative assessments that will measure
accuracy, speed and quality to make sure every nurse understands what is expected as well as the
trainers can measure if the nurses are meeting the requirements of the HCA (Hospitals
Corporation of America) facilities. There will also be a summative assessment that will measure
the level of success and proficiency that has been obtained throughout the training course. This
will be the live hands on Meditech benchmark evaluation. The benchmark evaluation will be
measured with the pre-evaluation that each nurse will take at the beginning of the training course

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this will measure the efficacy of the training by using level two of Kirkpatricks four level model
for evaluating training: Learning (MindTools, 2014).
In addition, there will be a continued interview survey given to the nursing managers and
supervisors to document the improvement and effectiveness of the nurses who went through
training.

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References

MindTools. (2014) Kirkpatrick's Four-Level Training Evaluation Model. Retrieved from

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/kirkpatrick.htm
Royse, D., Thyer, B., & Padgett, D. (2009). Program evaluation: An introduction (5th ed.).
Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Training and Development . (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.opm.gov/policy-dataoversight/training-and-development/planning-evaluating/#url=Training-NeedsAssessment