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Improving Healthcare Within The Realm Of Healthcare

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Outcomes are used to evaluate care within the realm of healthcare. Advances in the quality of care are related to quality improvement (QI). According to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2011), “quality improvement consists of systematic and continuous actions that lead to measurable improvement in health care services and the health status of targeted patient groups” (p. 1). With the desire for excellence, QI is an essential component to the advances in quality healthcare. QI is versatile, for it can be applied to various scenarios, such as a plan of care for ventilator-associated pneumonia prevention. Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a hospital-acquired condition that is currently not on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) list of non-payment hospital-acquired infections (CMS, 2015). However, the thought of adding VAP to the list occurred in past discussions by CMS (CMS, 2008). This may change when there is an improved definition with clearer inclusion criteria that is currently being constructed by the CDC (Klompas et al., 2014). Nonetheless, the goal is to prevent hospital-acquired illnesses like VAP. After performing a review of care interventions for the prevention of VAP, a collaborative team between the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Hospital Association, the Association for Professionals in

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