Quality Improvement Program: Case Study

Review the risks – the effectiveness of the precautions in place should be checked regularly to ensure that they are sufficient.

Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA) was signed into law on July 29, 2005, published on November 21, 2008 and became effective on January 19, 2009 (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d). PSQIA catalyzes sharing of healthcare data, information and patient safety practices between health care organizations by creating Patient Safety Organizations (PSO). Providers can report or share information related to patient safety events with PSO without the fears of liability, because “ PSQIA provides federal privilege and confidentiality protections for patient safety information, called patient safety work product” (USDHMS, n.d ). This means protected information cannot be introduced in any federal, state, local, or tribal civil,

In the United States alone there are 98,000 deaths per year caused by low quality health care (Ignatavicius & Workman, 2013, pg. 2). This statistic is disturbing because the errors that resulted in death were errors that were preventable. The intent of this chapter is to bring awareness to health care providers that are able to make a change in the quality of health care. In current practice patients are subjected to medication errors, preventable hospitalizations, premature death, and poor care provided due to racial, ethical, or low-income factors.

What do you consider to be the key issues for quality improvements in the NHS quality-improvement program as it goes forward?

The "Duke University Medical Center" (2005) website defines “quality improvement as a formal approach to the analysis of performance and systematic efforts for improvement”. Quality improvement programs are found in a variety of industries and are constructed differently. The medical field tends to use quality management to focus on patient and staff safety, reducing medical errors, and avoiding or decreasing morbidity and mortality rates. Health care organizations have been attempting to improve the quality of care for as long as “the nineteenth-century when obstetrician, Ignaz Semmelweis introduced hand washing to medical care, and Florence Nightingale who determined

A risk assessment is an important step in protecting residents and staff as well as complying with the law. The assessment helps focus on the risks that have the potential to cause harm and in this context, from the harm of acquiring an infection. In most instances, straightforward measures can readily control risks e.g. ensuring that clean and dirty linen are segregated to prevent cross contamination. The law does not expect that all risks will be eliminated, but requires that all steps that are reasonably practicable are taken to protect residents. The risk assessment is simply a careful examination of what could cause harm to residents in the workplace, including the risk of infection so that an assessment can be made on

Berry, L. L. (2000). Cultivating service brand equity. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28(1), 128-137. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1177/0092070300281012

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.

As a hospital, quality care should be a priority for patients that are going to be treated for a sickness, or any type of procedure that is going to take place. A lot of times a patient gets an infection while they were at the hospital, on top of being treated for what they original came in for. Health facilities should be environments of healing, which they are, but they also have tons of various types of germs and infections, which grasp onto individuals that have weak immune systems/are sick. Some infections that are at hospitals are Tuberculosis, VRE, VAP, C-Diff, UTI, and MRSA. Preventive measures to stop the spread of the infections is lacking tremendously in the work and aim to provide safety for all patient’s health. The work

After the interview with my nurse manager, I came up with the PICO question which states: “Does the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system reduce the number of medication errors compared to the common paper system being used today?” This question is important and I selected it because the population that the Belvoir Community hospital serves includes army officers of all ages both active and retired including their spouses and children. This group includes two sub groups of highly vulnerable persons which include the very young and the very old, who have a high-risk effect for medication errors because the potential adverse drug event is three times greater than an adult hospitalized patient (Levine et al., 2001). CPOE is not a panacea, but it does represent an effective tool for bringing real-time, evidence-based decision support to physicians. Nurses are the last defense level of protection against medication errors, and are solely responsible for the dispensing, administering, and monitoring of medications. In healthcare, computers can be used to help facilitate clear and accurate communication between health care professionals. When using a CPOE system it allows physicians to type in prescriptions right into the device or computer which significantly lessens any mistakes that can occur when

Output. Outputs are the direct forerunner to the modification in the patient’s status. Not all outputs are clinical; many organizations will have outputs secured to corporate or efficiency objectives and, therefore, call for variations to administrative and billing procedures.

As a part of quality improvement (QI) it is excellent practice for healthcare organizations to gather and analyze data in order to identify areas strength plus areas of weakness to promote improvement in patient care. Hospitals gather and use data to improve patient care. If the facility in this scenario gathered data on NSI’s as part of QI and then presented this information to the staff it could recognize strengths and point of areas of weaknesses. Quality improvement can lead to increases with staff satisfaction. Knowledge of this areas and lead to educational needs and staff awareness which can empower the staff to do better in areas of weakness. In the case scenario, awareness could have led to improvement in restraint use, pressure

Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement (QAPI) communicates the following five elements: design and scope, governance and leadership, feedback, data systems and monitoring, performance improvement projects, and systematic analysis and systemic action. The purpose of this paper is to communicate issues surrounding these topics, as well as aging problems. Are the topics evidence based? Do they have supporting documentation to put them into practice at various facilities? Can executing the aforementioned items make a difference at institutions? Now, start the journey to see how each section can be applied to your workplace.

IC.02.01.01: The hospital implements its infection prevention and control program, including surveillance, to minimize, reduce, or eliminate the risk of infection.

Quality is never an accident it is always the results of high intention, sincere efforts, intelligent directions and skillful execution, it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.