Assignment: Quality Improvement Initiative Essay

Assignment: Quality Improvement Initiative Essay

Assignment  Quality Improvement Initiative Essay

Healthcare organizations are constantly engaging in performance improvement initiatives with the aim of improving the patients’ experiences and outcomes. Quality care delivery results in quick recovery to the patients as well as reduced medical costs because of the reduced hospital stay period. Quality improvement initiatives focus on measuring the patients’ outcomes and develop new strategies to address the existing gaps and improve the efficiency of the healthcare delivery processes (Joshi, Ransom, Nash, & Ransom, 2014). Various quality indicators are considered in the improved process, and they include reduced hospital readmissions, proper waste management and disposal, patients’ data management and reducing the turnaround time. Proper data management is an important quality indicator that many hospitals focus on currently. In as much as there are other quality indicators, data management has been prioritized in the hospital set-up and thus will be the main focus of analysis in the paper.

As mentioned, the present health care setting focuses on data management as its quality improvement initiative. This focus has occurred in cognizance of the essence of having proper data management system given the technological pervasion of the health care industry. Poor data management results in communication errors between the healthcare providers, and prolonged patients’ stay in the hospital due to data unavailability. Indeed, Clarke and Persaud (2011) have implied that the absence of proper data management structures have led to the existence of certain adverse events in health care. Therefore, improving the patients’ data management is essential in the realization of high quality delivery of health care services. Patients’ data are collected from the time they get to the outpatient department. Hence, this data should be made readily available for proper management of the patients until the time they leave the hospital. Also, such records should be kept for easy monitoring and follow-up of patients with chronic diseases.

Furthermore, proper data management means that healthcare providers in a hospital institution. The senior leader in the institution works to ensure that the patient’s flow is improved and enhance the coordination among the various healthcare providers as advised by Clarke and Persaud (2011). Proper data management helps in easy sharing of vital information among healthcare providers and thus reducing patients’ movements within the hospital may help reduce their predisposition to hospital-acquired infections.

Furthermore, incidences of medical errors such as medication errors have increased. According to M. Ransom, S. Ransom, and Nash (2014), these incidences are majorly caused by wrong data entry or poor management and storage of the patients’ data among other factors. Therefore, addressing the problems caused by poor data management would facilitate the realization of quality care delivery and improve patients’ experiences significantly. Having considered all these factors, the institution leaders were convinced enough to prioritize this quality improvement initiative. Unpredictable discharge and prolonged delays in the discharge process are major roadblocks to the realization of efficient patient flow. Improving the discharge process can only be achieved first by ensuring the patients’ data can be easily retrieved, and billing is done promptly. Furthermore, the nurses can easily monitor their patients and determine whether they are ready for discharge through an efficient health information management system.

Moreover, the management ensures the existence of an organizational culture that has familiarity with the tools of data management

quality improvement. These ensures that the responsible hospital staff understand their roles properly with regards to the collection and dissemination of collected data for purposes of improving the quality of care. Further, an implementation of a systematic data collection methodology ensued when an adverse health event occurred at the setting. The uniformity evidenced in the categories of data collected by the hospital ensures that accuracy is maintained and validity of the data is guaranteed in consistence with M. Ransom, S. Ransom, and Nash (2014) assertion. By doing this, the hospital has proactively implemented internal mechanisms to address the issue of adverse events hence improvement of quality.

Click here to ORDER an A++ paper from our MASTERS and DOCTORATE WRITERS: Assignment: Quality Improvement Initiative Essay

 Adverse events have received significant coverage in both scholarly and public press spaces. Medication errors forms one of the most highly discussed issues as regards this phenomenon. Keers, Williams, Cooke, and Ashcroft (2013) conducted a scholarly analysis of medication errors and the attendant underlying system factors that have led to the existence of such errors. The article highlighted issues such as lapses and slips, deliberate violations, and knowledge-based mistakes as the main culprits in the existence of these errors. Moreover, inadequate written communication, high perceived workload, pharmacy dispensing errors also contribute to medication errors (Keers et al., 2013). Indeed, when an evaluation was conducted in my present health care setting concerning the causes of medication errors, some consistency with the factors outlined by the above authors occurred. The hospital discovered that staffing shortage leading to increased workload as well as pharmacy dispensing errors majorly contributed to these errors at the hospital.

            Therefore, hospitals constantly grapple with adverse events issues. As a result, they adopt multifarious quality improvement initiatives to ensure high-quality delivery of services to patients. These undertakings lead to mitigation of these adverse events thus resulting in improved perception of facilities by patients. Scholars as well as public press have also addressed the issues of medical adverse events. The exposure offered by these media permit health care settings to constantly work towards eliminating them hence improving the quality of their services.

Choose a QI initiative which has been the subject of focus in any healthcare setting. Explain the rationale that your senior leaders used in selecting this initiative for attention and focus.
Explain how adverse events are handled in your organization from the public’s perspective and well as internally.
Find a scholarly article or one from the public press, published within the last 5 years which recounts a serious error. Relate this error to any organization with which you have some familiarity.

SOURCES Joshi, M.S., Ransom, E.R., Nash, D.B., & Ransom, S.B., (Eds.). (2014). The Healthcare Quality Book, 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press.

Chapter 11: \”Patient Safety and Medical Errors\”
Clarke, C. M., & Persaud, D. D. (2011). Leading clinical handover improvement: a change strategy to implement best practices in the acute care setting. Journal of Patient Safety, 7(1), 11–18. doi:10.1097/PTS.0b013e31820c98a8

Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases.

For assignments that need to be submitted to Lopes Write, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.

Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.

Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?

Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource