Continuous Quality Improvement

Quality Improvement (QI) is an organizational approach leading to the quality of patient care and patient services through use of specific guidelines, principles, and methods to ensure quality of care for every patient and health care facility throughout the world. Quality outcomes focus on the principles of quality management. These measurements investigate the quality of care, patient outcomes and consumer needs, through being part of the participant group. This quality improvement discussion will review the foundational frameworks of QI and explanation of each framework in detail. Included in this QI report will be

McLaughlin, C.P., & Kaluzny, A.D. (2006). Continuous Quality Improvement in Health Care, Third Edition, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, MA.

Our Performance and Quality Improvement Process is based on the Continuous Quality Improvement Model which focuses on the importance of continuing to ask “Can we do it better? Can we do this more quickly? Is there something else we could do to improve the quality of care for our clients and the tools for our staff who deliver this high quality care?” In this model, the point is to focus on improvement even when nothing is wrong.

NHS quality improvement programs main purpose is to collect and review data entered in order to recognize the opportunities to improve business operations in healthcare. To bring changes in quality, it is necessary to respond to patient’s ideas and implement them for the better results. The key issues that are to be considered for quality-improvement NHS program, as it moves forward are the needs for the patients, necessity of the funds for quality improvements, needs of the service providers and expectations of the community. Outcomes for people and also change expertise. And to improve business operations in healthcare and also recognize opportunities.

Quality Improvement (QI) is an organizational approach that leads to the quality of patient care and services through use of specific set of guidelines, principles, and methodology. This is so that there is assurance that quality care is provided for every patient. Principles of quality improvement focus on measurements. These measurements involve data collection used to improve the quality of care, and patient outcomes. Any good quality improvement program ensures strengthening the systems through analyzes and processes.

A quality improvement (QI) project involves data-guided activities with short timelines to improve health care delivery systems (Arndt & Netsch, 2012). The setting of QI projects take place in a single setting and are monitored in the institution where the QI project is conducted. The purpose of a QI project is to change practice outcomes and apply known solutions to a known problem in that institution (Arndt & Netsch, 2012). Data obtained from the activities is disseminated through newsletters, flyers, through staff meetings, or submitted for publication and presented in

Quality improvement is a systematic and continuous process which leads to improvements in healthcare services. The health services are then a reflection of the improving health status of a patient population (Health Resources & Services Administration, n.d.). Quality improvement strategies are the actions which a team will take to accomplish the goals of process improvement. The Institute of Medicine (2001) has developed a vision of six aims for improvement in healthcare which include, safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable care. Making improvements in these areas will better meet the needs of patients.

The term quality improvement can be defined according to ones prospective in life. However, quality improvement in nursing is the steps nurses use to ensure the safety for our patients. It is also the standard in which leader’s incorporate within a medical facilities to ensure that safe patient care are been rendered. Nevertheless, It has been “estimated that 250,000 American died as a result of nurses or medical care error; which has become the third highest causes of death in the United States” (Hood, 2017, p.475).

I do agree that “all quality improvement initiative have both an intended and unintended consequences”. McFadden, Stock, Gowen (2014) mentioned that managerial decisions that encourage process quality may hurt patient safety results and vice versa. Kelly (2011) writes that continuous quality improvement (CQI) is directed towards on refining flawed practices to enhance the quality of the outcome. Newham, Schierhout, Bailie, and Ward (2016), completed a qualitative study examining the enablers and barriers of a CQI program in Aboriginal Public Health Care setting where staff recognized that positive and constant application of CQI involves facility systems and individual conduct change.

Continuous quality improvement also known as CQI is an implementation means for advancing the excellence of value presented by associations. Continuous quality improvement appertains to encompassing a standardized way to accumulating and evaluating information or data, in pursuance of to classify contingency to progress the process of a business with the conclusion of distributing improved benefits to consumers or patrons. CQI is a guided path to superiority development that accentuates a continuing or recurrent development of enhancement and assessment.

Weston, M. & Roberts, D., 2013, September. The Influence of Quality Improvement Efforts on Patient Outcomes And Nursing Work: A Perspective from Chief Nursing Officers at Three Large Health Systems. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. Retrieved on January 23, 2015 from http://www.nursingworld.org/Quality-Improvement-on-Patient-Outcomes.html

In order to understand the actual implementation of the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model for continuous quality improvement, I conducted an interview with my sister’s husband who is a physician that owns a practice in Germany. The interview took place on October 9, 2015 at 7 pm their time, which is 1 pm in my Eastern Time zone over the internet on the visual phone called Skype. I chose to interview Dr. Henkel because owning a practice in Germany requires more attention to customer satisfaction with the quality of care, since the patient has government health insurance and can be more discerning on where to go for health services. Therefore, this led me to conclude that he would have had to use the PDSA cycle at some point to keep his practice running. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed with our conversation on how he still uses the PDSA model to work continually on improving customer satisfaction with the health services received at his practice.

My experience in both my previous career in nursing and human resources has dealt with approaches in quality improvement in patient safety and different metrics in the turning up organizational behavior as well as up swinging the operations of the organizations respectively. We live in a rapidly changing world, and healthcare industry is not exempted from it. Because I will be playing an indispensable role in the future, I am very interested on the concept of quality improvement and what not and identify possible future challenges and draw lessons from healthcare organizations that has spearhead innovative changes to providing healthcare by pursuing the triple dimensions of the improvement of healthcare in general that is Improving the patient experience of care (including quality and satisfaction); Enriching the health of populations; and Reducing the per capita cost of health care.

The process emphasizes modifications of system when there are changes to achieve organizational goals (Begunn, Kaissi & Sweetland, 2005). For example, a leader’s approach to patient safety could be a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). CQI is an approach to quality management; it principle is built on the traditional quality assurance that emphasizes on an organization and it systems. It focuses on process rather than an individual; it recognizes both internal and external customers and it improve system processes.

Health care improvement and high quality care requires more then the technical approach of tools and methods, improvements often require a change in attitude and sense of ownership for the quality of serviced provided by an organization. Many supporting factors must integrate QI into the structure and foundation of the company, these are also known as the building blocks. Improvement also implies that it will be implemented in a variety of settings, circumstances and various levels within an organization. The structure has to also define how the different parts and levels of the QI program fit together and how they will be synchronized.