Essay Intermountain Health Care Case Study

Intermountain Healthcare (IHC) is a not-for-profit and integrated delivery system that provides coverage and care mainly in Utah and the southeastern part of Idaho. IHC has been the leader in developing and executing electronic medical records, in applying the principles of quality measurement (QI) and improvement to health care, and approaching to managing heath care delivery by integrating clinical transformation, launching, and focusing on data. They have 28,000staffs which include 700 physicians in a multispecialty group practice. IHC also operates 21 hospital. The company was also financially stable and bringing their cash value to $242 million dollars.

The purpose of quality management in healthcare is a continuous process that improves health care performance and increase customer satisfaction. Within health organizations there are many entities such as pharmacies and clinics all of which need to provide quality services to their patients. Quality improvements are organizational strategies incorporating evidence-based practice to improve healthcare (Huber, 2010). Reviewing why and how the need for quality management in a health care organization will be discussed.

Kaiser Permanente is a managed care facility that provides services across the health care continuum. Over the years the organization has continually made efforts toward improvements since it was first founded in 1945. These improvements generate a series of successes that set Kaiser apart from similar organizations. But, just as any health care delivery system, Kaiser has faced challenges in the past, present and may continue to do so in the future. In this paper I will explain what attributes to the success of Kaiser Permanente and some of the challenges they face.

RECOMMENDATION  There is “an inherent conflict between best care and financial performance”. The CEO states that “Finances are not, and never have been, our primary concern.” However, the business must address its decreasing profitability to be able to continue to survive. This will become even more urgent if the reduced government spending that the CEO foresees happens.  The organizational culture is high quality care, high-performance and non-profit which must be taken into account in any solution. The healthcare business has a clear focus and is very successful at continually improving its patient care and processes.  While clinical performance improvements have resulted in revenue losses for the Intermountain healthcare business the Intermountain health plan, SelectHealth, and other health plans that buy Intermountain health care services have benefitted. Intermountain needs to translate these benefits into additional profits to support its main business, healthcare.   Its skill at providing this care should translate into significant market advantage for SelectHealth and for Intermountain when selling

In the Harvard Business School case study of Intermountain Health Care (IHC), we learned about the efforts made by IHC to adopt a new strategy for managing health care delivery that is focused on improving care quality while simultaneously saving money. Beginning in 1986 as a series of experiments tying cost outcomes to traditional clinical trials, IHC’s approach to delivering care became known as “Clinical Integration” which “referred to both an organizational structure and a set of tools” (Bohmer, 2002). The organizational structure required a departure from the traditional administrative management model to one that “involved administrative and medical

In today’s time, the hallmark of the US health industry is to form integrated delivery systems. An integrated health delivery system is an arrangement of health professionals and health care facilities that provide health services within a continuous organization of delivery. These systems will allow the purchaser and consumer of health care service to receive all the needed services within a all-in-one delivery system that would facilitate the needed access to the appropriate level of care at the appropriate time (Professional Issues). I.D.S presumably will also provide higher quality services and more patient centric care at relatively lower costs (Effects of Integrated Delivery Systems on Cost and Quality). To best understand integrated delivery systems (IDS), it is helpful to contrast the IDS model with health service delivery under the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) arrangement.

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.

The IOM Report Brief is a significant revelation that indicates where the US healthcare delivery system lacks in offering quality care to every in the US. This report not only discusses the problems in the healthcare system but also presents recommendations as to how the government can improve it. This paper examines as to what the progress is made in the field of healthcare after this report was written.

This quality improvement discussion will review the purpose of quality management in health care industry and why it is needed. Included in this QI report will be an explanation of the

In this paper I am going to research three articles that describe current practices in healthcare organizations, in these articles I will be looking at the three principles of total quality: customer focus, continuous improvement, and teamwork.

Over the course of our countries history, the delivery of our health care system has tried to meet the needs of our growing and changing population. However, we somehow seem to fall short in delivering our goals of providing quality, affordable and accessible healthcare to our citizens. The history of our delivery system will show we continuously changed the delivery of our system however never mange to control cost. If we can come up with efficient ways to cut cost, the delivery of quality care will follow.

Quality is something that every health care agency strives to achieve. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) suggests that health care organizations develop a culture of safety such that an organization's care processes and workforce are focused on improving the reliability and safety of care for patients (Groves, Meisenbach, & Scott-Cawiezell, 2011). In order to address an issue related to health care quality, it is important to look at the frameworks that will analyze an organization and identify opportunities to improve performance. The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of an organization and an analysis of the following: mission, vision and values, strategic plan, goals,

For any organization to experience future success over the competition, some rudimentary changes have to evolve. Implementing some changes that would take on a total quality approach of continual improvement may be part of their overall strategic plan. Continuous service improvement sole purpose is the patient and their needs and expectations pertaining to healthcare. The focus is about creating a culture of improvement that includes every employee, no matter what level of employment, to be aware of and focus their actions on becoming more efficient for both patients and service providers (Ahsah ul, & Salman, 2015). In order for an organization to implement goal deployment and continual improvement, there has to be a campaign to change the

A major reason for performance improvement project failures is the misinterpretation of an ongoing performance program. Prioritizing performance efforts would help an organization achieve early quality improvement goals and maintain adequate momentum for future QI initiatives. An organization should follow six step approach model for implementing and monitoring a quality improvement program. First step of a six step quality improvement program model should line up improvement initiatives with the facility’s quality improvement program strategic objectives. Health care component relationship interaction is simultaneously affected and changed by the health care organization’s operational process systems. Due to the simultaneous change and impact of process components, it is very important for any ongoing performance improvement model to lineup parallel to the health care organizations strategic objectives. A health care facility’s objectives can take many forms and priorities. Federal or state accreditation and or developing a new medical wing or process are examples of an organization’s strategic objectives. In order for a quality improvement initiative to be successful, the QI initiative must lineup with the facilities strategic initiatives to obtain some form of accreditation or develop a new specialty department or health care process.

Fixing problems that face health care in many health facilities demand a system wide set of solutions. The systems used in these facilities must be assessed and redesigned to identify factors that will aid in the achievement of the set goals. The enormous task of achieving the goals should be undertaken collaboratively by all the key stakeholders, who include, health care professionals, planners and policy makers, administrators, payers, and patients and their families. These partnerships must begin with a common understanding of the problems together with a shared commitment to cooperate and work together to eliminate the problems. With this knowledge, therefore, an action plan for redesigning the health care system can be developed and later implemented. For a successful health care service to be realized, there are various factors which should be employed and which are not found in the traditional business setting. These include unique economic processes, proper regulatory requirements and the perfect quality indicators. This creates a need for every leader within the healthcare industry to create or develop unique skill sets that will harmonize both organizational leadership and the inter-professional team development. It is, therefore, important to understand the comprehensive approach to the management of patient care and also how the concepts of team development and organizational leadership support healthcare leaders in creation of a patient-centric