evaluate Health Care Delivery and Administrative Operations
Organizational Improvement
The purpose of implementing a quality improvement program is for the organization to internally monitor and evaluate Health Care Delivery and Administrative Operations. Armed with this information, the organization can then take actions which will lead to improvements throughout the system.
Quality improvement programs are required by accreditation and regulatory agencies, and the organizational quality data is shared with external stakeholders such as patients, and quality improvement organizations to create industry benchmarks. This requires the involvement of all departments and disciplines, not merely as separate entities, but as members of a team that work together through the interrelated processes involved in clinical and administrative functions.
Process measures are very useful at the organizational level, because they break processes down to the individual steps that can affect outcomes. They can demonstrate the rate of compliance with clinical or administrative and indicate the existence of issues that contribute to errors, inefficiencies or waste. When issues are identified, management or other responsible stakeholders can perform additional research to find the causes, then work on finding solutions. Once solutions are implemented, process measure data collected before the change are compared to data after changes were made to see if the actions taken were effective. This is what is known as performance improvement , which is a kind of “subset” of quality improvement.
Benefits of Organizational Quality Improvement
Refer to these links to learn more about the benefits of organizational quality improvement:
· Health Resources and Services Administration: www.hrsa.gov/quality/toolbox/methodology/qualityimprovement/index.html
· Improving Healthcare Quality: www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2013/06/26-improving-health-care-quality-mcclellan
Everyone Wants Quality but Other Demands Compete for Attention
The various medical, professional, and technical disciplines within an organization all have to meet specific internal and external requirements and share a fundamental goal of providing quality health care. However, each area must also address other priorities which make it challenging for staff to work on quality improvement projects or cause resistance to organizational quality improvement plans that seem to conflict with individual department goals and objectives.
Although most clinical and administrative departments can operate independently of each other, they still engage in functions or services that the others use to carry out their activities. Yet they may not share information or communicate issues that could affect processes or outcomes. This is known as “the silo effect” because information stays contained within departments and isn’t shared for process improvement purposes, especially when there are quality issues involved. To remove the silos and breaking down communication barriers, quality improvement staff and responsible management can educate departments about their shared values, goals and processes, and how working together on quality activities provides mutual benefits.
Setting the Tone for Quality Improvement
Senior leadership has to set the tone for quality improvement by actively participating in quality improvement initiatives and identifying key staff members who can provide leadership and education on quality improvement activities. There also has to be adequate resources to engage staff in quality improvement, such as formal training or consulting in statistical methods and presentation tools, and team building. An organization also has to adopt a culture of accountability, where every staff member is help responsible for what they do, and how they contribute to quality. This is an ongoing process, and quality measure data can also be used to encourage those efforts and practices that contribute to positive outcomes or to inform and educate staff components of processes that need to be improved.
There are assessment tools that organizations can use to evaluate their culture and commitment to promoting quality improvement. An example of this includes:
· NACCHO Culture of Quality Assessment Tool: Developed by the National Association of County and City Health Officials’ (NACCHO) and can be viewed here: https://monkessays.com/write-my-essay/naccho.org/topics/infrastructure/accreditation/qi-culture.cfm
