Examples Of Quality Initiatives That Could Increase Patient Satisfaction And Potentially Reduce Healthcare Cost

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.

The change to value based purchasing has bought many challenges to the healthcare industry. With the change to value-based purchasing for payments, it has changed how healthcare organization receive payment and delivery care. The advantage of have value based purchasing is that it improves the quality of care while reducing cost in an effort of aligning patient’s with the right provider and treatment plan (Minemyer, Jun 29, 2016). However, there are many disadvantages, such as it increases the patient volume as counteracting the reduction of procedure volume (Brown, B. & Crapo, 2016). Also it makes providers more responsible for care that is beyond the expected treatment of care needed (Minemyer, Jun 29, 2016). With quality measures tied

Triple Aim is an initiative created by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The primary goals are to improve patient experience, improve overall population health of Americans, and decrease the per capita cost of health care. These goals are a part of the care reform integrated into the nationwide strategy that was established as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (Zimmer, 2015) signed into law by President Obama in 2010. The ACA contains substantial modifications to how health care is compensated, funded, and provided within the timeframe of 2010 to 2018 to achieve all of the objectives. A few of the initiatives include the expansion of Medicaid, changes to private and small business health plans, participation conditions, federal subsidies, and limitations on cost sharing.

This paper will propose how TriCity Medical Center will monitor performance, achieve regulatory and accreditation compliance, and improve overall organizational performance. It will describe ways TCMC will communicate with leadership to ensure alignment of organizational goals and gain buy-in from staff to achieve compliance with the standards and requirements issued by regulatory and accreditation bodies. Also it will determine how compliance with the regulations and development of risk- and quality-management systems for the organization contributes to the organization’s overall performance-management system.

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.

A powerful force for change can be created by embracing transparency. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, “transparency is a broad-scale initiative enabling consumers to compare quality and the price of health care services so they can make their own informative choices among doctors and hospitals. This initiative is laying the foundation for pooling and analyzing information about procedures, hospitals and physicians services. In order to create value driven health care, there are four steps to turn raw data into

One of the biggest impacts on the healthcare industry is the transition from a fee-for-service model to a value-based payment model. This transition is emphasizing the importance of utilizing data captured electronically in EHRs, HIEs, and other clinical and business systems to improve patient care. Payers are implementing payment incentives and penalties based on performance in defined quality and safety metrics through programs such as Blue Cross’ Pay for Performance (P4P) or CMS’ Value-Based Purchasing (VBP). These programs, along with other factors, are resulting in a growing that utilizes data analytics and business intelligence to provide healthcare leaders and physicians with insight into their quality and safety metric status.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a federal health reform legislation engineered to provide Americans with high quality, affordable cost and better access to health care [1]. To address these overarching aims, the ACA requires the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care, also known as the National Quality Strategy (NQS) [2]. The strategy sets three aims. First, to make health care more reliable,

Determine the supporting factors that would aid in the reduction of healthcare cost in your organization without reducing quality of care for the patients.

Cleveland Clinic 's overall strategy for improving value for patients is to live by it 's message of "patients first", developed by the Clinic 's CEO, Dr Cosgrove. The overall strategy for improving value for patients was on by putting patients first and giving them the best that they could offer. They aimed their strategy at not only patients, but to providers as well to ensure that they would improve the value of service or experience that they would provide to patients. This was done in 6 components that will be described below.

The Computerized Provider Order Entry is effective program to help organization improve quality measures and financial margins. The CPOE is effective program; which monitors a hospitals current performance and calculates methods of improvement. For example, Trinity Hospital a leader in clinical intelligence to track and report across it members hospitals on systems wide quality measures (Balgrosky, 2015). The Clinical Provider Order Entry will help patients compare programs graded by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid and Hospital Quality Assurance. This program will further enhance the patient-centric model because patients will have comprehensive comparison of hospitals to make informed medical decision as to where they would like to receive treatment. The quality measures monitor readmission, complications, patient’s experience surveys and other categories. Patients are interested in receiving health care in top-notched care facilities that address their needs. Consumer needs are very important because translating into referrals by word-of-mouth or rankings. Technology plays a major role in an organization's success with supports Judy Murphy idea of enhancing patient’s health information technology

Quality measures are strategies that gauge, evaluate or compute health care processes, results, discernments, patient insight, and administrative structure. In addition, quality measures are frameworks that are connected with the capacity to deliver first-class health care and/or that are able to identify with one or more quality objectives for medicinal services. These objectives include: compelling, protected, effective, quiet focused, impartial, and opportune consideration. Quality measures can be used to measure quality improvement, public reporting, and pay-for-reporting programs specific for health care providers (CMS.gov, 2016). There are an assortment of quality measures in which health care organizations can use to determine the status of the care they are delivering. Many are appropriate, but few are chosen for this research paper. Among them are: National Health Care Surveys, Hospital IQR Programs, Scorecards, and Political, Power, and Perception/Data for Decision-making tools.

Examining planning for and effectively measuring the health care quality indicators make healthcare quality more transparent and provide information for quality improvement programs and initiatives in the healthcare system.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee to Design a Strategy for Quality Review and Assurance in Medicare defines quality of care to be “the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge” (Ransom, Joshi, Nash & Ransom, 2008). Making sure to have current knowledge on healthcare services is crucial to the quality of care provided, and health care professionals are expected to continuously stay updated on the changing trends. The IOM later released six aims for improvement, or also known as the six dimensions of quality, which are safe, effective, efficient, timely, patient-centered, and equitable.

Safe, effective, patient-centered care delivered in a timely and efficient manner is the goal of quality healthcare. Unfortunately, the delivery of such quality faces serious concerns. The Institute of Medicine (2001) describes the quality gap in healthcare as having three types of problems, “overuse, underuse, and misuse” (p. 23). In recent years, emphasis on improving the quality of care has increased (IOM, 2001). Quality improvement methods, such as plan-do-study-act (PDSA), have successfully enabled health care providers to address the quality gap. The purpose of this paper is to identify a quality healthcare problem, discuss the quality improvement plan, and describe the strategy for implementing effective change using the PDSA method.