Forest Hills Hospital: Patient Safety Improvement Research Paper

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Introduction

Forest Hills Hospital is one of the healthcare institutions in Queens, New York. It is known to be among the hospitals that experience problems with patient safety, and thus there is a considerably negative image of it among the patients in Queens (“Hospitals in the New York City,” 2012). Therefore, this paper aims to dwell upon the discussion of the issues related to patient safety in the health institution under consideration. After the identification of the problem is performed, the paper will observe the implementation of the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) framework to determine possible solutions for the issues related to patient safety. Since this paper investigates the medical institution, a more specific Healthcare Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (HFMEA) variety of FMEA method will be employed.

Identification of the Problem

According to a Consumer Report investigation, which was conducted in 2012, numerous hospital in New York tends to perform “a poor job on four key measures of patient safety,” not being with compliance with the healthcare standards of caregiving (“Hospitals in the New York City,” 2012, para. 1). One of the institutions, which is mentioned in this report as one of the most insufficient regarding medical performance, was Forest Hills Hospital (“Hospitals in New York City,” 2012). It could be suggested that the tendency of an ineffective provision of medical services continues to be the case for the hospital under discussion. Therefore, it is essential to determine the factors, which contribute to the adverse development of the situation to improve it.

According to the article on Consumer Reports website, there are four primary measures of patient safety: “hospital-acquired infections”, “readmissions”, communication of the hospital staff with patients about medical treatment, and “discharge planning” (“Hospitals in the New York City,” 2012, para. 3). These measures were chosen since they represent the principal aspects of caregiving quality, and thus they would provide a realistic picture of the current state of healthcare institutions. According to these four characteristics, the estimation was performed to retrieve an overall safety score for each hospital, and Forest Hills Hospital was scored “62 percent worse than average” (“Hospitals in the New York City,” 2012, para. 9).

Also, it is possible to mention the statistics provided in the research by Feyman and Howard (2016). The authors state that Forest Hills Hospital in the period from 2009 to 2010 the heart failure (HF) mortality rates were above the average level of New York state, and from 2011 to 2013 they were not significantly lower than the average level (Feyman & Howard, 2016). This fact represents the significant insufficiency in the treatment of heart diseases in Forest Hills Hospital. Additionally, according to the information retrieved from the HealthGrove website, the majority of Forest Hills Hospital’s patients claim they did not receive an outstanding level of care at this facility, and it should be mentioned that almost half of the patients would not recommend this hospital to others (“Hospitals in the New York City,” 2012, para. 9). Another problem that should be mentioned is the relatively high level of blood-transmitted infections in the healthcare facility (“Hospitals in New York City,” 2012).

The Implementation of FMEA/HFMEA Framework

Further, since the issues presented in the performance of Forest Hills Hospital were identified, it is appropriate to dwell upon the implementation of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) framework, concerning its more specific variety, Healthcare Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (HFMEA). According to the study by Öhrn, Ericsson, Andersson, and Elfström (2018), the FMEA approach is one of the most efficient tools for detection and reforming the healthcare facilities. The authors state that the implementation of this “prospective risk assessment method” benefits the improvement of hospitals’ overall performance (Öhrn et al., 2018, p. 17). One of the principal results that the authors retrieve from their massive research is that the most applicable motive for HFMEA (70% of the cases, which were studied) was the necessity of organizational change (Öhrn et al., 2018, p. 18).

Therefore, one of the principal steps, which could be proposed to improve the Forest Hills Hospital’s performance, is the implementation of organizational change on all levels of clinical staff. It would significantly benefit the performance of the facility. Also, it is possible to mention the inclusion of remote video audition tools, since they would ameliorate the work of “surgery suites, intensive care units (ICUs), endoscopy suites, labor, and delivery rooms and emergency departments” (“North Shore-LIJ,” 2015, para. 1).

Conclusion

Finally, it is essential to retrieve some findings from the conducted study. First of all, it would be appropriate to notice that Forest Hills Hospital tends to have a considerably negative public image due to its flaws in delivering care. Among the most widespread problem, this study detected high levels of heart failure mortality and blood-transmitted diseases. However, the implementation of the HFMEA framework appears to be considerably beneficial for the facility.

References

Feyman, Y., & Howard, P. (2016). Web.

Hospitals in the New York City rate poorly in patient safety. (2012). Web.

North Shore-LIJ takes patient safety and efficiency to new heights with remote video auditing expansion. (2015). Web.

Öhrn, A., Ericsson, C., Andersson, C., & Elfström, J. (2018). High rate of implementation of proposed actions for improvement with the healthcare failure mode effect analysis method: Evaluation of 117 analyses. Journal of Patient Safety, 14(1), 17-20.

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