Reducing Suffering in People With Diabetic Kidney Disease

Summary of the plan

The intervention program has been designed to reduce the number of people with diabetic kidney disease as well as manage the conditions of the already infected, with an aim of reducing suffering and progression of the kidney disease, managing the condition, prolonging life and improving the quality of life for the patients. It involves nurses working with clinicians, lab experts and other medical experts in an interdisciplinary team in order to provide the required medical, clinical, psychological and social support. Registered nurses are involved in coordinating the activities through examination of the patients conditions, social, cultural and economic backgrounds based on Nola Pender’s health promotion model.

Evaluation questions

To ensure a comprehensive evaluation of the proposed intervention plan, the evaluator will be seeking to answer the following questions:

• Does the program have the capacity to meet the needs of improving the outcomes of the care provided to the specific group of patients
• Is the degree of efficiency and effectiveness of the administration and implementation processes acceptable in a standard healthcare setting?
• Is the program able to provide the desired monetary and healthcare value to the patients and their families? (Pirie, 2010).

Potential formative and summative approaches to evaluation

The potential formative evaluation will be the implementation-focused FE because the evaluation will take place during the implementation and application of the proposed plan. It will focus on the process of assessing the problems associated with the differences between the implementation process and the actual execution.

On the other hand, the potential summative approach to evaluation will involve cost assessment, outcomes assessment and clinical outcome measures as described below.

Details of the evaluation plan

Evaluation of the results

The evaluator will be required to obtain some specific types of data relating to the individual patients. In this context, the evaluator will be seeking to obtain and evaluate data on the demographics, economic ability of the patients’ families, patient care as well as needs assessment. Comparison group data collection ad outcomes intensive cohort will be obtained. In addition, intensive research studies will be examined to develop an evidence-based approach. In this context, the evaluator will seek to obtain data from a 12-month intervention program. A follow-up will be developed in order to determine the medium-term outcomes of a sample of 350 patients receiving care for diabetic kidney disease at home and living with their respective families.

Process evaluation

The process evaluation will be carried out using minimum dataset such as eligibility, case management and process (Heaney & Israel, 2007). Administrative data such as observation site evaluation and intensive research studies will be carried out. Five locations will be used for observation site evaluation.

Economic evaluation

The evaluator will analyze the outcomes and data on costs from the process and results evaluation datasets above. It will involve modeling long-term outcomes. Two parts will be involved in the process (Schalock & Thornton, 2008). First, a cost-effectiveness analysis will be done. Secondly, a cost-benefit analysis will be developed. The evaluator will be required to apply the cost-effective analysis in order to address the technical inefficiencies with an aim of producing evidence on the cost per every unit of the actual outcomes measured against the expected outcomes. Intermediate outcome measures will be used in the analysis (Milstein & Wetterhall, 2010). On the other hand, the cost-benefit analysis will seek to answer the question “what works for the patients, under what circumstances and at what cost?”

Intensive research studies

The process will include an intensive studies on the factors that contribute to the unique characteristics of each patient, including the social, education and economic backgrounds. In addition, the evaluation will explore the opportunities for other studies on the patient care, including focus on other theories and care for the aging patients.

Evaluation management

The leading nurse will direct the entire process of evaluation with the members of the group. After the end of the original patient group, the evaluator will measure the medium-term outcomes for the intervention plan and compare it with cohorts.

References

Heaney, C. A., & Israel, B. A. (2007). Social Networks and Social Support. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

Milstein, R. L., & Wetterhall, S. F. (2010). CDC Evaluation Working Group. “Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health. MMWR 48(RR11), 1-40.

Pirie, P. L. (2010). Evaluating Health Promotion Programs: Basic Questions and Approaches. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Schalock, R., & Thornton, C. (2008). Program Evaluation: A Field Guide for Administrators. Plenum Press: New York.