Continuous Quality Improvement In Healthcare: A Case Study

NHS quality improvement programs main purpose is to collect and review data entered in order to recognize the opportunities to improve business operations in healthcare. To bring changes in quality, it is necessary to respond to patient’s ideas and implement them for the better results. The key issues that are to be considered for quality-improvement NHS program, as it moves forward are the needs for the patients, necessity of the funds for quality improvements, needs of the service providers and expectations of the community. Outcomes for people and also change expertise. And to improve business operations in healthcare and also recognize opportunities.

When looking at maintaining a CQI staff at WFRMC, it was apparent that it was maintained with a limited number of members (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2006). “The only program employee was Ms. Bette Gulsby, M.Ed., Director of Quality Improvement Resources, who served as staff and coach to Mr. Kausch and as a member of the quality improvement council. Corporate influences to assist in the hospital efforts consisted of providing staffing for QIP. “The mentor was provided by headquarters staff, and in the case of WFRMC was Dr. Batalden” (p.525). The corporate headquarters also provided a means for

QAPI represents an ongoing, organized method of doing business to achieve optimum results, involving all levels of an organization. CMS requires that healthcare entities implement and effectively demonstrate a program that encompasses the principals and methods associated with ongoing monitoring of outcomes. The QAPI Program provides the facility level team members a forum and platform to identify areas of growth, risk and refinement that potentially impact the quality of care rendered to the patient population or negatively impinge on the financial well-being of the organization.

The quality of doctor care based on outcome reports, and identifying those physicians who meet state performance measures will also be provided to consumers to benefit their health and healthcare

In order to understand the actual implementation of the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model for continuous quality improvement, I conducted an interview with my sister’s husband who is a physician that owns a practice in Germany. The interview took place on October 9, 2015 at 7 pm their time, which is 1 pm in my Eastern Time zone over the internet on the visual phone called Skype. I chose to interview Dr. Henkel because owning a practice in Germany requires more attention to customer satisfaction with the quality of care, since the patient has government health insurance and can be more discerning on where to go for health services. Therefore, this led me to conclude that he would have had to use the PDSA cycle at some point to keep his practice running. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed with our conversation on how he still uses the PDSA model to work continually on improving customer satisfaction with the health services received at his practice.

Develop a plan for the center by using clinical quality measures, or CQMs, which are tools to help track and measure the quality of health care serviced that are provided by eligible professionals, eligible hospitals that are within the health care system. These would be measures to use data that is associated with providers that are able to provide high quality care or relate to long term goals for health care. The measures would be the many aspects of patient care including:

In today’s health care organizations, Continuous Quality Improvement is a structured organizational process created to improve the quality of health care. The CQI system uses data collected to make positive changes and to recognize trends even before a problem exist. I had the opportunity to administer a “one on one” interview with one of University Medical Center‘s Epic Application Coordinators. Debra Lewis is Senior Analyst whose job entails building systems or designs in the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) department for end users. The Health Information and Compliance Departments are her clients within the hospital. Debra usually deals with the Health Information Modular (HIM) to create applications request which consist of release of information and identity, deficiency tracking, and hospital coding. If the client recognized that the current application needs improvement to be more efficient, they can send a request to see if a system can be built to a specific model for a particular provision. Her educational training has enabled her to perform at an advanced level throughout her professional career. Debra received her A.A.S degree in Health Information Technology, a Bachelors and M.B.A. in Business Administration, and also received credentialing as a Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA). With over 25 years of healthcare experience, she is no stranger to Continuous Quality

To facilitate quality improvement initiatives in Ontario, Health Quality Ontario (HQO) has developed a comprehensive Quality Improvement Framework (2013) that brings together several QI science models and methodologies including the Model for Improvement, as well as traditional manufacturing quality improvement methods such as Lean and Six Sigma. Health Quality Ontario grounded their framework in Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge to ensure that the suggested processes could be applied to any quality improvement initiative, in any health care sector. Health Quality Ontario’s QI Framework consists of six phases. Each of the phases is iterative and designed to build on knowledge gained in the previous phase. The phases are:

Continuous quality improvement also known as CQI is an implementation means for advancing the excellence of value presented by associations. Continuous quality improvement appertains to encompassing a standardized way to accumulating and evaluating information or data, in pursuance of to classify contingency to progress the process of a business with the conclusion of distributing improved benefits to consumers or patrons. CQI is a guided path to superiority development that accentuates a continuing or recurrent development of enhancement and assessment.

“Outcomes are defined as the impact, or end-results, of services on a person’s life; therefore outcomes-focused

Goal – To guarantee that the services delivered in patient and family/whanau centered manner to improve the outcomes (HQSC, 2015).

This was evident by one manager who told me that since the adoption of their tele-ICU system, they had been able to implement many more quality-of-care initiatives in their ICUs -- and to update their quality-improving protocols much more frequently. This intertwining of the technology with the clinical quality improvement initiatives makes evaluating the effects of the technology more challenging. But having interviewed senior tele-ICU managers, and studied health system transformation and quality improvement, I believe that such multidimensional analyses and thinking are crucial for appreciating what is required for delivery system reform to improve both quality and cost-efficiency.

-According to Donabedian (1980), structure refers to the ‘physical, human and financial resources available’ within the service. This includes location, car parking facilities, disabled access, staff, etc.

The key concepts of quality improvement are the new designing system and process changes that lead to improve operation and sustainable quality of organization culture. When new design and procedure are introduced, the change management priority is to transit employees to new state. To developing culture of quality, the quality management plan is the key feature of change management that needs to inform structure as a specific wide-rang of leaderships in organization to support transformation change and achieve quality outcome. At this point, Dawsonera (2005) leaderships must have clear vision at the new state of change, a highly visible and the desired of committed a senior manager to transition the key change process such as aim, objective, training, communication, planning to make employees awareness.

Health care improvement and high quality care requires more then the technical approach of tools and methods, improvements often require a change in attitude and sense of ownership for the quality of serviced provided by an organization. Many supporting factors must integrate QI into the structure and foundation of the company, these are also known as the building blocks. Improvement also implies that it will be implemented in a variety of settings, circumstances and various levels within an organization. The structure has to also define how the different parts and levels of the QI program fit together and how they will be synchronized.