Continuum Of Care Should Follow The Three Principles Of Total Quality Essay

This paper will explain the components of the Home Health Care delivery system of continuum. The reader will be able to understand some of the services provided by the home health care system and how they fit into the continuum of care. It will give details on how the entity does or does not contribute to the overall management of healthcare resources.

Care delivery models are an integral component for delivering patient care. With the collaboration of other members of the healthcare team, the Registered nurse is able to fully optimize his/her skill sets to provide to best quality care. As discussed consistency and coordinated care are the key. Studies must be conducted and evidence base practice must be implemented in order to find the model that is suitable for a particular unit. How models are implemented in an organization can be highly variable. Completion of this assignment has enlightened me on the profound impact that care models have in the flow of a unit. Newer models

This paper will describe current quality outcome measures and the significance for improving medical care. Organizational accountability and transparency has improved with the emergence of Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) programs and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPs). This article will review the role of the nurse manager in creating a culture for quality care as well as the nurse for meeting organizational and patient expectations. Organizations like The Joint Commission (JC), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and The American Nurses Association (ANA) have been critical in establishing standards for quality. This paper will also report on the most recent hospital statistics and steps taken to improve HCAHP scores and reduce readmission rates at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville (UTMCK). Statistics at UTMCK will also be compared to the Tennessee and National averages found on the Medicare website Hospital Compare. The aim of this paper is to explore if healthcare system initiatives are improving quality and enhancing patient outcomes.

McLaughlin, C.P., & Kaluzny, A.D. (2006). Continuous Quality Improvement in Health Care, Third Edition, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, MA.

Nursing sensitive indicators reflect the structure, process and outcomes of nursing care. The structure of nursing care is indicated by the supply of nursing staff, the skill level of the nursing staff, and the education/certification of nursing staff. Process indicators measure aspects of nursing care such as assessment, intervention, and RN job satisfaction. Patient outcomes that are determined to be nursing sensitive are those that improve if there is a greater quantity or quality of nursing care. ("Nursing world," 2013) Having knowledge of these indicators

Quality management is essential to the success of the quality improvement of the health care industry. “Management uses management and planning tools to organize the decision making process and create a hierarchy when faced with competing priorities “( Ransom, et al., 2008). Quality measures should have these goals: effective, safe, efficient, patient-centered, equitable, and timely care (Quality Measures, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2011).

A needs assessment encourages supportive relationships to reduce the risk of abuse and neglect, a demonstration of a needs assessment is as follows: Needs assessment is the key to ensuring that the required range and capacity of services is available and accessible to service users and their families in a local area. A good need assessment process will:

Throughout Unit 6 we reviewed the continuum of care in long-term care facilities and its many aspects. The continuum of care, also referred to as the delivery system of health care, is best defined as a full range of long-term care services increasing in level of acuity and complexity from one end to the other (PowerPoint). This delivery system is comprised of three substantial components. These components are the informal system, community based care, and the institutional system.

Quality improvement stems from nurses who are technologically knowledgeable and use technology to facilitate seamless care in which the patient is the center of the care and technology should not take time away from the patient. Nurses are the key caregivers in the hospital and have a significant influence on the quality of care provided and ultimately on treatment and patient outcomes. As a result, the hospitals pursuit of high quality patient care is on their ability to utilize nursing resources most effectively, which can become even more challenging due to the anticipated shortage of nurses. As the participation of hospitals in quality improvement initiatives increases, so will the role of nurses because “Nurses are the largest deliverer of health care in the US” (Draper, Felland, Liebhaber, & Melichar, 2008, p.2). Therefore, further research on the characteristics preferred for nurses for their involvement in quality improvement initiatives would be beneficial for positive health care reforms in the hospitals and other settings.

Drug and Alcohol Treatment in America has been based on the Medical Model of Treatment. According to Wikipedia, the medical model of addiction is rooted in the philosophy that addiction is a disease and has biological, neurological, genetic, and environmental sources of origin. Treatment includes potential detox with a 28 day or more stay at a residential treatment facility. The continuum of care can include an additional 28 days at the partial hospitalization level, followed by another 6 weeks of Intensive Outpatient.

The following scorecard was built on nursing practices in the various nursing homes in order to discover best practices that can be used to improve patient outcomes and experiences and to serve as matrices

Design and scope constitute element one. Pertaining to nursing homes, a quality improvement program should take aim at medical care, resident selection, and quality of life (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS], n.d.). An initiative was developed to better diabetes care

Dr. Avedis Donabedian developed a model for categorizing and measuring the quality of healthcare providing a framework that conceptualized quality in broad terms and classification to measure and assess different aspects of quality in nursing care (Sollecito & Johnson, 2013). In the footsteps of Donabedian’s framework, Dr. Beatrice Kalisch developed a model conceptualizing missed nursing care otherwise known as “unfinished nursing care” or “care left undone”. Missed nursing care as defined in the Missed Nursing Care Model is any aspect of required patient care that is omitted, either in part or whole, or delayed (Kalisch, Landstrom, & Hinshaw, 2009). The structural aspects Kalisch’s model include labor resources, nursing staff, competency level of staff, education and experience, material resources, teamwork and communication. Kalisch model indicates that nurses with recent restricted resources in the nursing process determining clinical priorities is costly making decisions either to delay or omit certain care and is heavily influenced by team perception, nurse judgment, ("Missed Nursing Care AHRQ," 2015).

Once a quality improvement plan (QIP) has been developed and evaluation methods determined, a plan for implementing the initiative must be created. An action plan is a series of steps and timelines that will ensure a QIP is implemented successfully (Desjardines, 2011). The purpose of this paper is to outline an implementation plan for the QIP of reducing the rate of worsening pain in the elderly with dementia and other forms of cognitive using a nursing education strategy in the Veterans Centre (VC) at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

Weston, M. & Roberts, D., 2013, September. The Influence of Quality Improvement Efforts on Patient Outcomes And Nursing Work: A Perspective from Chief Nursing Officers at Three Large Health Systems. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. Retrieved on January 23, 2015 from http://www.nursingworld.org/Quality-Improvement-on-Patient-Outcomes.html