Background
Most health care organizations face several challenges in the current health care environment and marketplace due to the ever-changing patient demographics, new technological changes, aggressive competition, and sophisticated patient needs (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2004, p. 1). As a result, there is the need for health care organizations to embrace change in terms of developing and implementing different strategies, which inform various changes in the organizational culture and quality management. Here, it is imperative for health care organizations to employ the continuous quality improvement (CQI) strategy in attaining the desired organizational outcomes.
This essay presents a CQI assessment case study regarding the ABC Memorial Health Center relative to the proposed quality improvement plan, which aims at transforming the health center into a high-performance organization. As a result, the essay uses a set of questions regarding the proposed plan to assess the steps involved in transforming the health center from its status into a high-performance organization. In addition, the essay describes the critical stakeholders required to implement the CQI plan, and the importance of establishing a climate of a high-performance organization in the health center. Lastly, the essay evaluates the role of clinical staff, employees, and customers in developing, conceptualizing, and implementing the proposed plan.
Case Analysis
What steps will you need to take to facilitate the transition from an independent, unit-based, punitive critical incident system to a more open, team-focused, critical incident learning culture?
To transform the health center from its present status into a different status that reflects the qualities of a high-performance organization, there is the need to embrace cultural change that affects all critical stakeholders. Here, the organizational culture refers to the normal protocols that govern the conduct of different employees and the management within an organization. Additionally, the organizational mission statement, strategic plan, goals, objectives, policies, and procedures reinforce the organizational culture (Huber, 2010, p. 219).
Therefore, to achieve cultural change at the ABC Memorial Health Center, there is the need to change the current mission statement, strategic plans, goals, objectives, policies, and procedures. However, it is not possible to carry out all these changes at the same time. As a result, it is relevant to use the PDSA cycle to implement the proposed CQI plan. Here, the PDSA cycle entails a process by process implementation of change through planning, doing, studying, and acting. Furthermore, management in healthcare involves planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling the activities of other health care professionals to meet the set goals and strategies, which are usually designed to improve the quality levels of previous goals (Huber, 2010, p. 23).
Therefore, the PDSA cycle is imperative in the current case because it enables the critical stakeholders in the health center to identify the problems and causes associated with the current organizational culture, and then design other appropriate changes to address these problems. Here, the Plan and Do stages in the cycle are imperative to an organization in terms of enabling it to establish a baseline through identifying priorities for the change process, and designing corrective strategies to address the problems identified. Subsequently, the Study stage of the cycle presents the implementers with the opportunity of evaluating the effect of the changes designed to improve quality.
Additionally, the Act stage of the cycle entails standardizing and improving the successful changes and discarding or re-designing the unsuccessful ones. Overall, accurate implementation of the PDSA cycle produces timely and cost-effective implementation of cultural change in any organization (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2004, p. 13).
Who are the critical stakeholders for implementing change in the quality improvement process?
To achieve cultural change in the health center, there is the need to seek the equal participation of the management, clinical staff members and employees, providers, payers, and customers in the process of implementing the quality improvement process. Here, the management plays a major role in terms of setting and communicating goals and strategies regarding the plan. Additionally, the management provides the necessary tools and resources required in the implementation process (Huber, 2010).
Conversely, the clinical staff and employees form an integral part of the change process because cultural change starts with changing the normal way of doing things. As a result, the clinical staff and employees must review their day-to-day work plans to give room for the learning process, which aims at instilling a culture of continuous quality improvement and high performance (Huber, 2010). Furthermore, providers, payers, and customers are important to the implementation process because they set the targets and the needs, which other stakeholders must meet as they go about implementing the designed changes.
Is it important to build a climate of a high-performance organization? If so, why?
Relative to the current issues in health care, it is very important to build a climate of a high-performance organization because, by definition, a high-performance health care organization is an institution that uses limited resources to lower the cost, and increase the quality of health care services (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2004, p. 23). As a result, creating a high-performance environment at the ABC Memorial Health Center will not only encourage cultural change, but will also aim to improve the quality of services and lower the overall cost.
Here, one imperative of the CQI plan is to provide evidence-based care services by encouraging the clinical staff to take part in clinical research, and come up with treatment strategies that result in minimum errors in service delivery (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2004). Therefore, the CQI plan allows the clinical staff to provide appropriate, high-quality, timely, and necessary services. Conversely, since the CQI plan entails encouraging the current clinical staff members to align their technical skills with the current technological innovations through learning, their rate and quality of service delivery will probably improve.
In what way should the clinical staff and employees be involved in conceptualizing, building, and implementing the CQI plan?
Since the clinical staff and employees are the primary targets of the change process, their understanding of the concepts and participation in the whole process cannot be overstated. Here, the clinical staff and employees play a major role in the change process by receiving first-hand information from the management regarding the designed changes. Therefore, they have a clear understanding of the process requirements and they can participate in the planning and identification of the change priorities (Huber, 2010).
Conversely, the clinical staff and employees are imperative to the change process because they are the participants in the learning process. Here, the clinical staff and employees take part in various assessment tests, which aim at transforming their experiences into practical knowledge that is core to the organization’s set goals and strategies for change. As a result, the clinical staff and employees need to test their ability to produce knowledge, share knowledge, and achieve relevant learning skills relative to the set goals and strategies (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2004, p. 33).
What is the role of the customer in developing a high-performance organization?
A customer in health care refers to the end-user of the activities of the management, clinical staff, and employees. Therefore, a customer can be a payer, a patient, and clinical staff members from different departments within the same organization or members of a different health center (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2004, p. 4). As a result, the customers play two major roles in the process of change. First, customers set the targets, goals, and needs, which should be met by the process implementers through designing changes that respond to customer needs. Secondly, customers are imperative when the implementers want to assess the success of a particular change process (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2004).
Here, customer satisfaction forms an integral part of testing quality improvement in the new processes and end-products. Therefore, customers enable other clinical stakeholders in the change process to align the available resources with the current market needs. As a result, before planning for any CQI project, there is the need for one to conduct consumer surveys, interviews, and establish focus groups whose purpose is to collect data regarding consumer needs and expectations.
Conclusions
This essay presents a case study involving the ABC Memorial Heath Center relative to plans to transform the health center from its status into a high-performance organization. The discussions above show that a high-performance organization is an institution that uses limited resources to meet the current market needs without compromising customer satisfaction and the quality of service delivery. In addition, the essay shows that continuous quality improvement (CQI) is imperative in establishing a high-performance organization because it informs different processes of change in an organization. Therefore, there is the need for different organizations especially in the health care sector to embrace change through the CQI to address the current issues in the market.
Reference list
Huber, D.L. (2010). Leadership and nursing care management (4th ed.). Maryland Heights, MO: Saunders Elsevier.
McLaughlin, P.C. & Kaluzny, A.D. (2004). Continuous quality improvement in health care: Theory, implementation, and applications (2nd ed.). New York: Jones & Bartlett Learning.