How Does Hospital Performance Improve The Quality Of Patient Care

Ms. Conlon applies the nursing process to systems or processes at the unit/team/work group level to improve care. Deirdre has been the primary nurse for 6 hemodialysis patients. She has involved patients and families in monthly interdisciplinary meetings to promote self-efficacy and quality of life. With the help of the interdisciplinary team Deirdre has worked collaboratively to address and reinforce nutritional needs, social/family issues, barriers to care, and safety concerns. All of her primary care patients have maintained a goal of 100% for dialysis adequacy (benchmark is 85%) and a vascular access rate of 100% and dictated by KDOQI standards.

The main objective of healthcare professionals is to provide the best quality of patient care and the highest level of patient safety. To achieve that objective, there are many organizations that help improve the quality of care. One of the best examples is the Joint Commission. Unfortunately, the healthcare system is not free from total risks. In healthcare activities, there are possible errors, mistakes, near miss and adverse events. All of those negative events are preventable. But, it is clear that errors caused in healthcare result in thousands of deaths in the United States.

This hospital is a 65-bed rural hospital but it is the job of every hospital to give the best patient care possible. With a

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.

Rio Grande Medical Center is a full service not-for-profit acute care hospital with 325 beds. Most of the hospital’s facilities are devoted to inpatient care and emergency services, but a 100,000-square-foot section of the hospital is devoted to outpatient (OP) services. Of the 100,000-square-foot OP section, the OP Clinic uses 80%/80,000-square-feet, and the remaining 20%/20,000-square-feet are used by the Dialysis Center. Increased patient volume at the OP Clinic has created a need for 25% more space than it is currently assigned. Due to its large size and patients’ need to access other departments the decision has been made to move the Dialysis Center to another location, and allow the OP Clinic to

At Fort Madison Community Hospital they are focus at continuing improving quality service and managing care within the facility. To do this they have to measure accurately by different methods of quality improvement strategies. The managers also have to look at information technology applications and use benchmarking, milestones to help manage quality improvement to have a more effective facility.

Benchmarking for clinical performance measurement involves collecting and reporting data on practices’ clinical processes and outcomes. Measuring clinical performance can create buy-in for improvement work in the practice and enables the practice to track their improvements over time. This information should also be used to identify and prioritize improvement goals and to track progress toward those goals. In addition, these data should be used to monitor maintenance of changes already made ("Module 7. measuring," 2013). Benchmarking can also be utilized to do a comparison between other health care organizations, provide areas where training could improve staff functions.

A few service models are generally accepted as an outpatient dialysis service line. Healthcare organizations have to decide which mode of dialysis they deem most effective in serving their patients: 1) Outsourcing their dialysis service line to a specialized service provider such as Fresenius or Davita, 2) instituting a home dialysis service 3) Implementing a hospital stand alone outpatient dialysis center 4) Free standing dialysis clinic. In addition, organizations need to establish protocols on the two-dialysis treatments, hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis, and reach a consensus which to provide.

An opportunity or metric for Memorial Herman Northeast to improve upon are Bloodstream infections after surgery and mortality rates.

Focusing on improving quality service and managing care at Fort Madison Community Hospital is something they are striving to do daily. Managers also have to take in account of looking at information technology and its applications. Using these they find benchmarking and milestones. By discovering the benchmarking it will allow Fort Madison Community Hospital to better manage quality improvement so that it will be for effective daily.

Cabral was part of the hemodialysis team who received an award in October for having the highest AVF rate (a quality indicator) among 186 dialysis units in the Southeast. Her skill in cannulation and her attention to detail in identifying any problems with access has helped to exceed our unit benchmark. Ms. Bardsley and her colleagues were also recognized by the VA for being 2nd in the country for excellence in AVF rates, adequacy of hemodialysis and anemia management. Ms. Cabral actively participates in quality improvement activities that result in improved outcomes. Ms. Cabral helps to guide evidenced based practice in the dialysis unit. She participates in monthly quality improvement meetings with the interdisciplinary hemodialysis team in order to discuss and improve quality outcomes. She has revised the Epogen protocol to improve the anemia

The focus of this research study is to consider the nursing question, “In hospitalized adults, how does routine, compared with clinically indicated replacement of peripheral IV catheters affect patients?”

Time and again, hospitals are often called upon to improve the quality of its various health care activities in order to better serve patients and immediate communities. A quality improvement plan thus helps in the selection of high priority areas and the utilization of evidence-based practices in conducting the improvement (Berenguer et al., 2010). In view of the healthcare improvement needs of Sunlight Hospital, this paper seeks to classify and justify five measurements of quality of care in a hospital, specify the four main features in a health care organization that can be used in the design of a quality improvement plan, and suggest the salient reasons quality of care would add value and create a competitive advantage

-Examine at least three (3) examples of quality initiatives that could increase patient satisfaction and potentially reduce healthcare cost. Support your response with examples of the successful application your chosen quality initiatives.

Benchmarking is a powerful tool used to promote continuous improvement of an organization. It enables the decision-makers to realize how much improvement is required to achieve satisfactory performance. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has defined benchmarking as “a measurement tool for monitoring the impact of governance, management and clinical and logistical functions” (as cited in Ettorchi-Tardy, Levif & Michel, 2012). There are four different kinds of benchmarking: internal, external or competitive, functional and generic or best practice. Also, there are several benefits of using benchmarking within healthcare organizations such as improving the quality of patient care, encouraging accountability among providers, improving productivity, yielding greater efficiency, meeting accreditation requirements, etc.