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.
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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.