Executive Summary
The quality improvement plan will highlight St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital an autonomous nonprofit organization that has committed to improving the quality and affordability of health care in Memphis. The paper will highlight the mission, goals and objectives of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital using different quality improvement activities mentioned. The quality improvement activities help hospital generate income for the free treatment services they offer. The QI activities include the created campaigns such as ‘Partner in Hope’ and ‘Genome Project’. The initiatives have helped save more children from cancer and increase their chances of survival.
In each and every organization, success does not only mean that when things are at their peak positively that the leaders should stop at that. More yearning for improvement and change should be also part of the goals by each and every leader in any organization. According to St. Jude Children Research Hospital, health care delivery including to rural areas needs to continue being boosted. However, despite various challenges, the statistics show that health care delivery to the rural citizens has been effective. This still needs to be improved and due to that, the service delivery by this organization has been under high pressure.
The QI also provides data collection tools used by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital by inviting stakeholders to pull resources in order to maximize on producing information about the quality, utilization and costs of healthcare. The QI processes and methodology that have been used will the Lean and Six Sigma described as a roadmap designed for exploring and improving the process.
New skilled workforce with added skills so as to fight upcoming disease with more ease is an issue being handled with the help of the Q1 program. Many health care organizations always deliver wrong health care services due to lack of newer and improved skills. According to St Jude’s Children Research Hospital, there needs to be an addition of few individuals with new and improved skills so that they can enhance their skills to the existing workforce. This will enable the current health care and other staffs equip themselves with new skills to be able to handle new emerging diseases. These two matters need a lot of concentration and the health care taskforce should not always be stagnant at one place but should aim at moving more higher and more positive.
The QI plan organization includes the board of directors, external advisory boards and ALSAC leadership. ALSAC’s has been directing fundraising association for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for 50 years. The external advisory boards are divided into two the scientific advisory board, which comprises of 13 members with a vast background in Biochemistry and Public health .The second category is the Cancer Center Advisory Board, which has nine members from all over the United States with a specialized knowledge in Cancer and it treatment. It also has a program for high school students known as the predoctoral that prepares them as the future science and medicine specialists. The hospital also offers Pediatric Oncology Education where short-term training experience in laboratory, research or clinical research is acquired.
Each and every year, the hospital has a target higher than the previous year. This ensures that effective and efficient health care delivery is not only offered but also improved regularly. It is the initiative of all leaders in the ALSAC leadership as well as the board of directors to oversee the continuous improvement.
Introduction
A quality improvement plan is a precise organizational work plan that overarches managerial work plan for a healthcare organization’s clinical and the quality improvement of services. It provides detailed information of how an organization will control, execute and evaluate quality enhancement throughout the organization. Thomas Danny founded Children’s Research Hospital of St. June in 1962. He not only changed the lives of children who could not access proper healthcare, but he was changing lives globally (Pratt, 1997). St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is built on one sole mission, which is to advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric cataclysmic diseases through investigations and treatment. The hospital’s values are in line with the founder’s vision of providing treatment to all children despite their religion, race or a family’s financial ability.
Goals and Objectives
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital goals are to who provide treatment for cancer and other catastrophic illnesses for children. The treatments offered are free of charge St. Jude is an NGO that relies on donors and well-wishers. They select patients who are legible for treatment despite their financial abilities.
The hospital has family-centered care where the staff and family collaborate to work together to cater for the child’s basic and secondary needs as much as they can. Family-centered care is repetitive effort to be quick to respond to the requirements and decisions of each family. The main objectives of the family-centered care are dignity and respect and information sharing. It also enhances involvement and collaboration. However, to further achieve their goals they need to improve the quality in health care in order to attract more well-wishers and donors.
QI Activities
St. Jude Children’s Hospital has various activities intended to increase the number of donors. Some of the activities are Partner in Hope where donors can go online and confirm what their contribution could be used at the hospital. Because of the heartfelt offerings they receive from these organizations, they can meet a significant percentage of the cost of operations of $2million a day.
The treatments developed at St. Judes have alleviated childhood cancer survival rate from 20% largely to more than 80% since it was established fifty years ago. This specific reason alone is enough proof that the hospital is striving to save more children from cancer. Most doctors refer their cancer patients to St. Jude because of its proficiency in survival rates. Another quality improvement was the effort to sequence the pediatric cancer genome in 2010. The sequencing of complete cancerous and healthy genomes of 700 childhood cancer patients resulted to tremendous discoveries in a couple of aggressive childhood cancers. Times Magazine recognized St. Jude for the Genome project as amongst the best 100 new scientific discoveries in 2013 (O'Reilly et.al, 2013).
Data Collection Tools
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is an independent nonprofit organization that aims to invite stakeholders, well-wishers, and philanthropic groups to pull resources together in order to maximize on producing information about the quality, utilization and costs of healthcare in the community. The institution particularly needs capital to fund its free consultation clinics for children with malignant cancers and other chronic conditions (Sox, Eden, & Wheatley, 2008). Established as a non-profit organization, the annual donor funding of about $54,527,942 is what the hospital relies on. Thus, it requires to have an effective fund management policy that ensures that money is not wasted or mishandled.
The availability of refined decentralized capital offers St. Jude investigators an outstanding research lead. It has highly advanced equipment, and facilities staffed with highly qualified specialists extensively accessible to clinical and basic science investigators.
QI Processes and Methodology
Quality improvement is a system approach to analyzing the performance of an organization and generates collaborative efforts to advance it. QI complements research methods by providing a more methodical approach constantly to observe and regulate those methods to sustain valuable and efficient research. The approaches that will undergird St. Judes’ QI plan are the Lean and Six Sigma. The Lean philosophy is founded on the notion that applying any resources to attain any other goal apart from establishing customer value is wasteful. The Six Sigma is an organized tool set, methods strategies and techniques for the improvement process. The methodology that St. Jude will use will be a Six Sigma DMAIC methodology (Breyfogle, 2003). The Six Sigma DMAIC methodology is described as a roadmap designed for exploring and improving the process.
Comparative Databases, Benchmarks, and Professional Practice Standards
According to the American Health Association St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is ranked nationally number one in pediatric specialty. The American Health Association provides specific hospital details that help in planning, market analysis and health services research. Among 89 services, St. Jude was ranked in at least one of 10 in the 2014-15 the Best Children’s Hospitals by AHA (American Hospital Association, 2007).
Organization
The Children’s Research Hospital of St. Jude has been directed by its fundraising organization ALSAC for almost 50 years now. The hospital has a board of directors and executive committee and external advisory boards. The Hospital has a decentralized form of organization, which spreads the responsibilities of each member of the fraternity. Therefore, the hospital achieves its goals and objectives of improving the quality of healthcare efficiently. The external advisory boards are divided into two the scientific advisory board, which comprises of 13 members with a vast background in Biochemistry and Public health .The second category is the Cancer Center Advisory Board, which has nine members from all over the United States with a specialized knowledge in Cancer and it treatment.
Communication
The activity outcomes are communicated to the board of directors and executive committee by the academic departments and divisions. The academic departments and divisions have various sections that work on developing different therapeutic investigations. World-renowned scientists and clinical investigators perform these departmental activities.
Education
St. Jude aims at providing training and educating the next generation of children to their preferred professions. It also aims at impacting life skills to the children. The hospital plays an important objective in preparing future leaders of science and medicine through a pre-doctoral plan put in place for high school students to the post-doctoral level. The hospital also offers Pediatric Oncology Education where short-term training experience in laboratory, research or clinical research is acquired.
Conclusion
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is globally acknowledged for its original research and dealing with children with cancer and tragic diseases. In the United States, it is ranked as one of the pediatric cancer hospitals. The hospital has also formed alliances with two California institutions in an effort to combine both resources and man power to venture in clinical trials and basic translational research. The hospital also has an International Outreach Program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to spread and achieve its mission on a global scale.
References
American Hospital Association. (2007). Hospital statistics. Healthcare InfoSource.
Breyfogle III, F. W. (2003). Implementing six sigma: smarter solutions using statistical methods. John Wiley & Sons.
O'Reilly, M., Kohn, D. B., Bartlett, J., Benson, J., Brooks, P. J., Byrne, B. J., & Corrigan-Curay, J. (2013). Gene therapy for rare diseases: summary of a national institutes of health workshop, september 13, 2012. Human gene therapy, 24(4), 355-362.
Pratt, C. B. (1997). St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, 14(1), 1-4.
Sox, H., McNeil, B., Eden, J., & Wheatley, B. (Eds.). (2008). Knowing What Works in Health Care:: A Roadmap for the Nation. National Academies Press.
