Executive Summary
Healthcare facilities need high quality standards to enable them surpass patients’ expectations. Georgia Healthcare Center needs to develop effective systems that enable patients benefit from quality health outcomes. This healthcare facility needs to institute several quality procedures to enable it achieve its mission and organizational objectives. The firm needs to build a positive reputation in the healthcare industry to encourage patients to make repeat visits to the facility.
Quality issues that need to be handled include safety, medical errors, carelessness, inappropriate drugs, dangerous treatment procedures and negative treatment outcomes. These quality problems occur due to incompetence, carelessness and inadequate training of staff. These problems have a negative effect on safety standards, which patients are exposed to while getting treatment. The hospital needs to put in place effective policies to reduce incidents of patients getting exposed to poor quality services. This will improve treatment outcomes in the health facility.
The hospital needs to evaluate all employees to determine their competence. This will help the management to find out if there are any gaps in quality that need to be addressed to improve health outcomes in the hospital. This can be achieved through effective collection of data to assess the quality of operations in all departments. The firm needs to use effective methodologies to evaluate the impact of quality improvements adopted.
All employees need to satisfy various goals to enable the firm achieve quality standards desired.This will make it possible for the firm to sustain positive relationships with its clients. All stakeholders are required to observe professional practice standards and quality benchmarks established. This will make them understand the role they need to play to enable the organization achieve quality outcomes in its operations. The quality improvement committee will monitor and advise senior managers on the way quality systems will be implemented in the firm.
Introduction/Purpose
The Georgia Healthcare Center is a health facility that provides cancer and coronary treatment services, together with counseling programs to its patients. It has a mission of setting up health programs that help eradicate cancer and coronary diseases in the community, to enhance the health status of community members. The healthcare center intends to offer quality services to its patients to enable them overcome various lifestyle diseases that affect them.
Cancer and coronary health complications kill a lot of people in the society. Therefore, Georgia Healthcare Center intends to offer timely and quality remedies to patients to enable them overcome these conditions. The firm has employees who are well trained in different medical disciplines who do their best to offer quality care to all patients. The firm has put in place tools to evaluate how it performs and assess internal safety standards that need improvements.
Goals/ Objectives
The firm has a strategic quality improvement plan which will guide how it delivers quality healthcare services to its clients. The firm intends to hire qualified medical staff with necessary skills, to perform duties assigned to them effectively. The firm also intends to expand its operating centers to make them serve more patients. The firm will adopt lean administrative techniques to make its operations more efficient. Adherence to strict ethical standards will ensure customers have more confidence in services offered by the firm. The firm plans to purchase modern equipment to help it improve treatment outcomes (Lighter, 2013, p. 56). These goals conform to the firm’s mission which intends to improve the quality of healthcare offered to people living in nearby communities.
Scope/Description of Activities
The firm intends to improve all departments to make them achieve the quality standards which have been set. Cancer screening programs will be made more effective to detect symptoms in their early stages to improve success rates of cancer therapies. The firm will also streamline other testing procedures to make them more effective for customers’ needs. Managers will encourage physicians and nurses to develop appropriate therapies that make cancer patients more comfortable whenever they visit the health facility.
The firm will assess all employees to determine their level of training and ability to perform crucial healthcare functions. This will make it possible for the firm to understand if its employees are able to achieve high quality standards. The firm will establish positive relationships with its employees to get feedback regarding crucial internal processes.
Data Collection Tools
In-depth data interviews will be used to collect data from various respondents, through a series of questions, to determine crucial issues related to quality. In- depth interviews make it possible for an interviewer to find out more information regarding different issues, from each individual employee or patient. The information obtained from the interview is compiled into a final report which proposes plans of action that need to be undertaken.
The firm will also use Focused Discussion Groups to collect data. This allows doctors, nurses and patients to discuss a specific topic related to the quality of service offered in the facility. The discussion is recorded and in the end, proposals made by participants are synthesized to compile a final report. Observation checklists allow a researcher to observe different activities in a healthcare facility which he or she records in a sheet (Pillitteri, 2009, p. 79). Later, the researcher compiles data out of observations he has made.
An in-depth interview is a data collection tool that allows information provided to be treated confidentially, which eliminates the possibility of a bias. Therefore, a respondent answers questions based on his or her own perspective and understanding of the quality issue under discussion. Information gathered through interviews helps managers identify internal processes that need improvements to enable the organization discharge quality services to its clients.
Focused Discussion Groups enable patients share experiences with caregivers and other stakeholders. This approach helps a healthcare institution to find out more information about patient satisfaction approaches to be used to improve quality of services offered. Observation checklists allow researchers to check adherence to ethical practices and standards by nurses and physicians in a specific health institution (White, 2012, p. 78).
Processes and Methodology
The Clinical Practice Improvement (CPI) helps to assess clinical services offered to each individual patient. This method makes it possible for an institution to understand challenges, which hinder effective delivery of healthcare. CPI enables compilation of information in a healthcare facility which allows caregivers to make improvements in crucial internal procedures. The Lean Methodology is used to identify patient’s needs in a particular health institution to enhance safety outcomes from health services offered.
This allows a healthcare institution to address the cause of a safety problem in an institution, which helps medical workers give an individual patient effective remedies to the problem being faced. Failure Modes And Effects Analysis (FMEA) is used to identify failures, problems and other weaknesses in a system. This enables a healthcare institution detect any dangers that may affect patients’ safety. Therefore, it allows a healthcare facility to take precautionary measures to address the problem before it gets out of control (Rosenthal & Sutcliffe, 2002, p. 102).
The CPI methodology enables healthcare facilities make changes in the way they deliver their services to patients. This methodology allows nurses to assess collected data to analyze health delivery issues that have an impact on patient safety. This allows them to make important decisions, which address safety challenges patients are exposed to. The Lean methodology helps nurses identify the root cause of a specific safety issue affecting a patient.
This approach makes it possible for a health facility to offer personalized care to specific patients, which improves the quality of treatment outcomes realized. The FMEA methodology warns nurses and doctors to anticipate a safety problem before it happens. This allows caregivers to take precautions to prevent patients from being harmed by a particular safety hazard (Rosenthal & Sutcliffe, 2002, p. 104).
Benchmarks, and Professional Practice Standards
The hospital will use blood screening, lipid screening and other quality indicators to determine the progress of quality systems adopted. The firm will also develop policies that stipulate how safety issues need to be handled by different members of staff. It will also use milestones to evaluate the progress of quality systems implemented in the organization. These benchmarks and professional practice standards will help the firm improve the quality of services it offers (Gift & Mosel, 2003, p. 78).
Structure/ Organization
The board of directors will evaluate the effectiveness of the quality improvement plan and will provide resources to be used to make the plan operational. The quality improvement committee will recommend policies and monitor any issues that affect how the plan is implemented in the firm. Medical staff will work closely with other stakeholders to ensure the quality improvement plan is implemented effectively.
The firm’s executives will communicate the benefits of the plan to other members of staff. They will also coordinate with other stakeholders to make its implementation successful. Middle managers will facilitate workers and other stakeholders by organizing meetings to help members of staff understand what they are expected to do. Department staff will develop content that outlines how the plan is going to be implemented to ensure it is in line with necessary accreditations.
Communication
The firm’s stakeholders will be informed on how the plan is going to be implemented through meetings, emails, letters and memos. This will make them understand the firm’s quality policies and the role they need to play to make this plan succeed.
Education
Members of staff will be oriented into the plan to make them aware of their roles. Various tools such as flow charts, brainstorming sessions and pareto charts will be used to make all staff members understand the new plan. These tools will allow members of staff to internalize important aspects of the quality improvement plan (Chao, Anderson & Hernandez, 2009, p. 72).
Annual Evaluation
The quality improvement committee will be responsible for the evaluation of the plan. They will produce a report that sums up the review process, quality improvement initiatives, missions,modifications and other proposals. The implementation will focus on ethical standards that need to be achieved by staff in the firm as they perform their duties. The annual evaluation conducted will help the firm analyze the way staff are performing their duties.
References
Chao, S., Anderson, K., & Hernandez, L. M. (2009). Toward health equity and patient-centeredness: Integrating health literacy, disparities reduction, and quality improvement workshop summary. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
Gift, R., & Mosel, D. (2003). Benchmarking in health care. Chicago, IL: American Hospital Publishing, Inc.
Lighter, D. (2013). Basics of health care performance improvement: A lean six sigma approach. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Pillitteri, A. (2009). Maternal and child health nursing: Care of the childbearing and childrearing family. Hagerstown, MD: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Rosenthal, M., & Sutcliffe, K. (2002). Medical error: What do we know? What do we do? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
White, J. (2012). Global case studies in maternal and child health. London UK: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.