Project 2 promoting health care quality

Project 2: Promoting Health Care Quality

Throughout this course you have been considering the relationship between structure, process, and outcomes as it relates to health care quality. Looking at outcomes, alone, may not tell the “whole story.” For instance, if you are concerned with improving fall rates, evaluating the process—related activities or practices—can help you identify factors that contribute to outcomes and develop strategies for improving them.

For this section of your Course Project, you create a process map to examine a current process related to your quality improvement issue. You will use the results of the process mapping to redesign a process to help minimize or close the performance gap(s). As you proceed, keep in mind the importance of maintaining a patient-centered focus so the patient experience is not negatively affected by any changes in process.

To prepare:

Running head: PROMOTING HEALTH CARE QUALITY
Promoting Health Care Quality
Courtney Pribonic
01/05/2020
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PROMOTING HEALTH CARE QUALITY
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Promoting Health Care Quality
Part 1
Quality improvement issue, evidence evaluation, and the quality standards appropriate
measures and indicators of performance
The quality improvement in medical errors question comes as the main problem in the
healthcare sector, especially to nursing care. Human errors have become a significant issue that
can destroy the outcomes of nurse efforts. The healthcare centres are focused on dealing with
the arising problems. Medical errors include the wrong prescription, poor care services, incorrect
and erroneous mistakes that occur in the diagnosis process, and so on.
According to the institute of medicine (IOM), the six main healthcare improvement that
is related to quality improvement includes equitable care, patient-centred care, timely care, and
safe care. Medical-related errors have contributed to poor health outcomes in the US and the
world in general (Hickey & Brosnan, 2017). The cases of medical-related errors leading to high
mortality rates are also evident. Specialists estimate that more than 44000 people lose their lives
in the US as a result of the iatrogenic injury that arises from medical-related errors. This
approach calls for the need to improve the quality of the services in the efforts to make plans
more effective and beneficial to the patients. Effects of the medical errors go beyond
deterioration of health to the extent of agreeing with the family’s financial positions as the arising
issues will dig deep into reality.
In making the patients safe, the nurses must do their services while ensuring that patients
remain unharmed from their actions (Woo, Milworm, & Dowding, 2017). In this case, they must
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receive the care intended to benefit them and not to create any harm. The practical aim gears
towards offering services those bases on the scientific knowledge that will lead to the desired
outcomes. Patient-centred outcomes aim reflects on the need for offer services directed to each
case. In this case, each of the patient cases requires non-generalized but personalized care service
that will lead to inclusion and regard to the correct values on the patients. This issue requires
following the required guideline and making clinical decisions that are vital to each patient case.
Timely care is an aim directed towards realizing a reduced wait times and elimination of delays
that come in during the care process. Efficient care works on creating avoidance of waste in the
form of energy, ideas, facilities, and equipment. The equitable care aims at providing a no
varying service towards all patients with any kind of discrimination on the basis such as race,
gender, age or economic status.
Evidence of the organization’s performance related to the quality improvement issue,
methods for gathering data.
The current situation depicts by erroneous occurrences that lower the care delivery.
Gathering information requires a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods. In
this case, the measurement will come from people differing views and the numbers affected. The
organization considers the arising issues as a threat to the patient outcomes as well as its overall
mission to ensure quality and efficient healthcare services to all patients under its care.
Considerably, the main issues that affect the organization on the healthcare delivery
system include inaccurate reporting, exploited medications, wrong diagnosis, poor auditing,
administering medications at the long times, and so on. Overcoming the challenges is the core
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task needed in this case, the healthcare organization looks forward to formulating solutions that
will eliminate the issues (Woo, Milworm, & Dowding, 2017). The adoption of new technologies
occurs in the organization. However, inadequate training has continued to leave it at the same
state of erroneous occurrences that will need it to overcome. In such a case, interventions will
help.
Desired achievement and gaps observed
According to Polk (2014), taking more innovative steps toward creating improvements in
the healthcare sector will aid in eliminating the current problem. Technology is an aspect that has
driven change in many organizations in different areas. The use of integrated systems such as the
Enterprise Relationship program will allow the systems to work together. In this case, having
systems that occur lowers the chances of making computerized errors that come with wrong
interpretation or misdiagnosis. For instance, during the surgery operations, all departments
involved will be aware of the process based on accessing the same information. Facts such as
reminders, updates, and many other patients’ data will help to ensure that errors are eliminated.
Without the enabled precise error reporting mechanisms, it becomes impossible and
difficulty for the organization to solve the issues as they remain hidden. Miles (2018) argues that
expiry dates are important, and failure to which a patient is consuming the expired medication
vis exposed to risk. Healthcare organizations are expected to dispose of medications that are
expired. Again, checking for errors is recommended where the PH level may keep on varying,
thus requiring the organizations to consult the manufactures before diluting the medications.
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Quality Improvement Initiatives, Measures, Indicators, data collection methods, and
analysis
The quality improvement initiatives as a team-based effort. Generally, the services in the
organization will succeed if all areas are prosperous in meeting the expectations. Changes to
healthcare will need all healthcare staff to support the transition to offer new improvements to
the patients’ service delivery, as well as participate and engage in professional development. In
fixing the errors, identification of avoidable mistakes must eliminate inefficiencies and
ineffective care services.
The collection of data from the case of quality improvement plan will need to utilize
RMS so that reporting, as well as tracking, are enabled. Data collected will be categorized on the
following bases; omission, duplication, incorrect time, exported drug allocation, failure to offer
proper medication, failure to provide the right dose, and inaccurate frequency. A root cause
analysis will s in evaluating the errors in the different categories. It’s from the realization of the
root issue that solutions will be formulated.
Reducing errors is a significant way of ensuring that the organization delivers its quality
improvement plan. They require well to streamline the process that will involve proper analysis
of the issues and finding the best solutions/. With an address on the errors, the patient outcomes
will be significantly improved. According to Hickey & Brosnan (2017, creating a culture of
reporting will ensure that erroneous issues do not lead to primary unhealthy outcomes.
Measuring the progress will be shown through the reduced false occurrences. It’s the aim of the
organization that it achieves a zero error occurrence in all medical practices.
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Part 2
The initiation process that involves quality improvement efforts needs proper planning in
ensuring that success is achieved. Implementing changes will require methods of buy-in that take
from all forms of leadership b with the responsibility aspects that will be for the benefit of a
healthcare organization. To some of the leaders, it can be a challenging task. Thus, many of the
leaders opt to take a top-down model that drives in change. With no proper planning, quality
improvement plans through making changes can face a challenge and planning offer the basis of
quality improvements.
Initial Steps
Establishment of the members to the leadership that will create the change
implementation needs is a necessary step. In this case, there is a need to have well-measured
change support that’s verified. Reflecting on the Donabedian model applied in change evaluation,
especially on the structure process, will be used in determining the care results (Moore et al.,
2015). It will be applied in the assessment of the illustration of both present states of the patients
as well as the strategies applicable to solving healthcare-related issues. Appling the Buy-in from
the leaders of the nursing and organizational units, it’s possible to acquire support coming from
the other corporate stakeholders. Top organizational management will determine progress as it
has the mandate to release resources necessary to ensure successful operations in the healthcare
organization. Leadership is a vital element of whether the company is big or small.
Formation of Team
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Team formation is a necessary step that will need to be considered with seriousness.
Taking a right and competent team members is a step towards forming a strong team (Knox &
Aspy, 2014). Organizations in the healthcare set up will require to be driven by those with good
knowledge of changes management and abilities to keep track of success and possible fallouts.
The team needs to keep in consideration the champions of changes. Generally, this would
include those people who come up with ideas on making the changes. There are supposed to be
part of the leadership making so that they can give more details on the purposes connected to the
issue. Also, coaching services may be required to ensure that the team can easily be facilitated.
Specific Steps
The accessibility to care services does not require negation for the process changes.
Availability to care needs to remain has a significant focus on the patients. Additional training
efforts will be necessary to ensure that the service care to the patient to improve the outcomes.
Proper scheduling for the meetings geared towards improving services and boosting the service
delivery regularly.
Patients’ needs are better addressed by focusing on the right agenda. In this case, the
meetings’ main agenda should only be patient outcomes improvement and efforts geared towards
making it successful (Polk, 2014). However, looking at another endeavour, planning will make
the efforts successful. To achieve the goals of creating a patient-centred care service, the
members of the team need to be well aware of the needs of the goals of their mission. In this
case, the arising and identified healthcare issues will be successfully addressed. The right
outcomes will be motivated by the services delivery state. Generally, changing the patient’s
perceptions of the care providers will promote their medical response to a positive change.
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Follow Up
It’s an important aspect to make an excellent follow up that will allow the organization to
make sure that recommended changes are well implemented. In this case, reviewing the patients’
satisfaction through questionnaires and interviews will enable it to gain a better understanding of
the outcomes of the implemented changes aimed at improving the quality of the care they receive
from the nurses. It’s important to brief the team on the progress realized after evaluation analysis
was done.
This issue will allow the nurses to create better intervention efforts such as those on areas
with issues. For instance, the cases of medical error will occur through training, implementation
of better systems that will keep and offer the correct data. Electronic data filing that will help to
eliminate human errors and so on. Change of practices is recommendable such that modifications
take place on the areas where failure may reveal. The organization will allow need to understand
the areas it hits success.
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References
Hickey, J. V., & Brosnan, C. A. (2017). Evaluation of health care quality in for dips (2nd ed.).
New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.
Miles, C. (2013). The Project Champion: A Management Best Practice. Retrieved from
https://smallbiztrends.com/2013/12/what-is-a-project-champion.html
Moore, L., Lavoie, A., Bourgeois, G., & Lapointe, J. (2015). Donabedian’s structure-processoutcome quality of care model: validation in an integrated trauma system. Journal of
Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 78(6), 1168-1175.
Knox, L. M., & Aspy, C. B. (2014). Quality improvement as a tool for translating evidencebased interventions into practice: What the youth violence prevention community can
learn from healthcare. American Journal of Community Psychology, 48(1-2), 56–64.
Polk, J.D. (2014). Lean Six Sigma, innovation and the change acceleration process can work
together. Physician Executive, 37(1), 38-42.
Woo, K., Milworm, G., & Dowding, D. (2017). Characteristics of Quality Improvement
Champions in Nursing Homes: A Systematic Review With Implications for EvidenceBased Practice. Worldviews of Evidence-Based Nursing, 14(7), 440-446.