Quality Insurance

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.

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).

Health care managers need to improve quality services in health organizations. To improve these quality services they have to use methods that are proven helpful in the QI process. For example, Six Sigma is used to display and measure quality improvement data. It is also used to measure

This quality improvement discussion will review the purpose of quality management in health care industry and why it is needed. Included in this QI report will be an explanation of the

A quality improvement (QI) project involves data-guided activities with short timelines to improve health care delivery systems (Arndt & Netsch, 2012). The setting of QI projects take place in a single setting and are monitored in the institution where the QI project is conducted. The purpose of a QI project is to change practice outcomes and apply known solutions to a known problem in that institution (Arndt & Netsch, 2012). Data obtained from the activities is disseminated through newsletters, flyers, through staff meetings, or submitted for publication and presented in

For health care organizations quality data collection is an essential tool used for data collection. The information produced from the data assists the health care organization in other functions such as effective ways to manage and perform decision making for the organization, this includes the strategic planning process. Quality improvement is the method of assessing processes and provides the information necessary to improve services. All of this together allows the health care organization to become a high producing system of

My experience in both my previous career in nursing and human resources has dealt with approaches in quality improvement in patient safety and different metrics in the turning up organizational behavior as well as up swinging the operations of the organizations respectively. We live in a rapidly changing world, and healthcare industry is not exempted from it. Because I will be playing an indispensable role in the future, I am very interested on the concept of quality improvement and what not and identify possible future challenges and draw lessons from healthcare organizations that has spearhead innovative changes to providing healthcare by pursuing the triple dimensions of the improvement of healthcare in general that is Improving the patient experience of care (including quality and satisfaction); Enriching the health of populations; and Reducing the per capita cost of health care.

One way that an organization can use benchmarks and performance measures to monitor success of quality improvement initiatives is by measuring overall organizational quality improvement and benchmark amount of waste. By measuring overall quality improvement and setting quality improvement benchmarks, the team can verify if the undertaken quality improvement initiative had a positive impact on overall quality improvement for the betterment of patients. Conversely, quality improvement performance measures can also indicate if some areas of the QI plan need improvement or have been unsuccessful. By analyzing quality improvement performance measures and benchmarks, the QI initiative will provide better indication as to if the bottom line of improving patient outcomes is attainable and or achieved. Or if the quality improvement initiative has had a negative impact on patient outcomes and what QI processes need to be addresses. Benchmarking can help the QI team get a better understanding as to how well the QI initiative goals have done compared to previous processes. If the QI team sets a benchmark to improve the number of patients seen on a day to day basis by adopting a new QI process and does not succeed. The team can then use the QI initiative benchmark and quality improvement performance measures to analyze gathered data and fix the issue or change the quality improvement plan

al., 2012). Trying to get the leadership motivated with adapting to TQM was a challenge in the beginning. The enthusiasm of top leaders has caused the TQM process to become effective. Although Health care has a complex adaptive system, leadership is crucial in implementing an improvement system (Sollecito & Johnson, 2013). The strengths of the TQM process were the support of the chamber of commerce, implementation of a quality improvement plan, adapting a successful way to measure improvement and development of cost effective techniques (McLaughlin, et. al., 2012). Corporate headquarters was totally involved in the TQM program with the CEO John Kausch as an active member of the Total Quality Council of the Pensacola, Area Chamber of Commerce (McLaughlin, et. al., 2012)

Many different conceptual models exist for evaluating a process. An evaluation is a necessary step to determine how well a process is working and if the targets are being met. The measurements in a quality improvement project are important to assess where the organization stands with the project, and to determine success of the project (Sadeghi, Barzi, Mikhail, & Shabot, 2013). There are both financial performance metrics and quality performance metrics that are used in healthcare to determine success.

Leaders that are committed to quality improvement will positively identify the need for improvement, achieve buy-in from employees and other staff members, and develop the appropriate oversight of quality improvement initiatives. All stakeholders should be involved in the quality improvement process to include managers, consumers, and supporting government agencies and consultants. Managers and leaders in healthcare develop standards of performance and quality while consumers provide valuable feedback by completing customer satisfaction surveys. Providers and other health professional are evaluated on their performance which is measured against local, state, and national standards of performance. Providers and other health professional also play critical part of establishing quality related councils and committees, the empowerment of nurses and other health professionals, and investment of new technology an infrastructure that facilitate quality

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.

Healthcare providers strive to improve service quality by implementing various quality management programs. Customers tend to seek for higher quality of care when choosing treatments, providers, and health plans. For healthcare organizations that desire to provide high quality care and compete in the global market, choosing a quality management program to implement is critical for performance and efficiency. Many studies have been conducted to analyze the effectiveness of such programs. Lean, Six Sigma and Total Quality Management (TQM) are three programs that will reviewed by three different case studies in efforts to understand them and to compare and contrast their capabilities.

The concept of Six Sigma was developed in the early 1980’s at Motorola Corporation (Harry and Schroeder, 2000). Six Sigma can be defined as a statistical measure of the performance of a process or product (Kumi et. al., 2006). It is used as a quality control mechanism, which seeks to reduce defects or variations in a process to 3.4 per million opportunities thereby optimizing output and increasing customer satisfaction (Sambhe, 2012). Sigma is representing the standard deviation, a unit of measurement that designates the distribution or spread about the mean of a process (Six Sigma Academy, 2002). In addition, the Six Sigma uniquely driven by close understanding of customer needs, disciplined use of fact, data, and statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing improving, and reinventing business processes (Pande, P., et. al. 2000). The Six Sigma methodology uses statistical tools to identify the factors that matter most for improving the quality of processes and generating bottom-line results. The Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure,

Originally, Six Sigma was designed for control of defects and was part of total quality management (TQM) (Gupta, 2003). Since its creation, however, it has gone well beyond what it was originally. It is much more of a methodology now, and used to address and handle the variations that are seen in processes. These variations can cause defects, and that makes them unacceptable deviations that stray too far from the mean. When the variations can be managed systematically, the defects will be largely eliminated from any product (Gupta, 2003; Whalen, 2002; Witt, 2002). Because of that, the Six Sigma objective is to provide performance, value, and reliability to every end user or customer on a level that is world-class. Through the years it has gotten much better at meeting that objective, and more companies have began adopting it. One such company is Cessna. The company makes airplanes and airplane parts, and its name is almost synonymous with small, personal aircraft.