Executive Summary: Improvement of Patient Care Quality Project
The types of data collection and display tools that will be used and deciding which one is best for the project
Questionnaires concerning satisfaction are feasible and useful means of providing opportunities for patients and involving them into the health case provision process and manner (Pope, 2002). They are also a good tool for continuous quality assessment and prioritization of actions that are necessary to improve quality. Analysis of the data collected by means of questionnaires will be analyzed by means of special programs. The results of such analysis will help identify the weaknesses of the patient care quality that cause of inconvenience to the patients.
The quality milestones that will be set
The first quality milestone will be to improve customer satisfaction by 20% within the first 6 months after project implementation. The following milestones will be achieving 5% patient satisfaction increase every three month compared to the results of questionnaire that was conducted during previous quality assessment procedure.
The role of IT
One of the objectives of quality improvement plan is optimization of the EHR that is currently used and installation of more CT scan machines (Chien-Fa, 2013). Technologies used for performing robotic surgery might also be taken into consideration as part of this plan implementation project. Besides, it will be necessary to acquire and adjust special programs that will make it possible to analyze the data obtained from questionnaires. Therefore it will be necessary to involve IT specialists who will install, modify, improve and run all required computer software.
Any internal or external benchmarks
Competitive (external) benchmarking will be applied to compare the results of patients’ health care quality satisfaction in the given hospital to the clients’ satisfaction with the quality of health care services that are offered by the best hospitals and health care providers in the area. When the results for given hospital will be better that those of any other hospital and/or health care provider in the area, it will be possible to move on to compare it with the results of the top-10 hospitals in the country.
The timeframe of when and how to evaluate and re-evaluate
The plan will be implemented in four steps throughout the course of 60 days. The first step is to inform the staff about the upcoming project. The second step is to gather the team and discuss the peculiarities and possible implications of the composed plan, define the roles of the members of the project implementation team and outline the necessary steps and establish the key objectives of the plan that should be accomplished, evaluating the risks and developing several risk mitigation strategies (Glembocki & Fitzpatrick, 2013). These activities will take the first 30 days ten days of work on the project. The third step is to monitor the progress of the plan implementation (Cowen & Moorhead, 2012), which will take the last 30 days of the project. The final fourth step is to evaluate the accomplishments and revise the existing plan if needed. The interim efficiency of the plan will be available for assessment after the first 20 days after the plan implementation.
The key players
The following personnel are involved into an interdisciplinary quality improvement team:
Chief Executive Officer (makes key decisions as to the direction chosen for the organization), Chief Financial Officer (financial planning), Chief Nursing Officer (coordinates daily nursing operations), Directors of Department (ensure smooth cooperation between departments), Director of Staff Development Department (makes sure that the staff within different departments shows high levels of performance), Charge Nurses (support and directly supervise the medical staff and maintain a high-quality care), Staff (bedside) Nurses (directly interact with patients).
A successful quality improvement program should include components such as the focus on data, focus on patients, focus on being part of a team, and quality improvement teams’ working as systems (HRSA, 2011). Teamwork and interactions within an interdisciplinary team play a crucial role in hospital care delivery (O’Leary, Sehgal, Terrell, & Williams, 2011).
References
Chien-Fa, L. (2013). User-driven healthcare: Concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications. Hershey, PA: Medical Information Science Reference
Cowen, P., & Moorhead, S. (2012). Current issues in nursing. St. Louis, MO: Mosby Elsevier.
Glembocki, M. M., & Fitzpatrick, J. J. (2013). Advancing professional nursing practice: Relationship-based care and the ANA standards of professional nursing practice. Minneapolis, MN: Creative Health Care Management.
HRSA. (2011). Quality improvement. Retrieved from https://www.hrsa.gov/quality/toolbox/508pdfs/qualityimprovement.pdf
Mosadeghrad, A. (2014). Factors influencing healthcare service quality. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 3(2), 77-89.
O’Leary, K., Sehgal, N., Terrell, G., & Williams, M. (2011). Interdisciplinary teamwork in hospitals: A review and practical recommendations for improvement. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 1, 1-7.
Pope, C. (2002). Qualitative methods in research on healthcare quality. Quality And Safety In Health Care, 11(2), 148-152. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/qhc.11.2.148
