Quality Management Relating Risk management policies and practices to quality management

Quality Management for X Medical Facility

Quality management in the health care aims at ensuring that patients, who seek their services, obtain an exceptional provision of health care. According to Reichert (2011), every health care giver aims at providing quality services to their clients compelling them to employ quality management. Health care organizations perform this task to exhibit their dedication to providing the best care for their clients. Quality management application in health care businesses ensures that doctors and administrators benefit from the identification of ways to enhance internal procedures in order to ensure quality services for their patients. The major aim of the process is to identify any requirements for improvements by analyzing the weak areas in order to enhance them. This stems from the realization that every health care organization should provide care that is patient-centered, timely, effective, safe and equitable (American College of Medical Quality, 2010).

The purpose of quality management in health care organizations

According to American College of Medical Quality (2010), the purpose of quality management in health care businesses has shifted focus from policing to the application of quality management instruments for continuous improvement of service delivery. Quality management in health care organizations serves three main purposes with the aim of improving the provision of services in these businesses. First, it is a means of continuously developing and improving the services that the health care teams provide to patients within the organization and to the community at large. Second, this procedure provides a way of ensuring accountability for the use of medical and the physical resources in the process of taking care of patients. Lastly, quality management provides a way through which clinical outcomes of patients improve in relation to the definition, which patients and health care systems provide.

The purpose of quality management for X medical facility is to ensure improved services exist throughout the organization. The organization shall use quality management as a tool to identify all the weak areas in the organization and put in place corrective measures to alleviate any flaws that the facility may identify. The organization shall also use quality management as means to ensure that patients and organizations are safe from any risks. In order to get optimal results from this practice, X medical facility shall comply with Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization and other accreditation standards for healthcare.

The key concepts of quality management

Some of the key concepts of quality management are risk management, monitoring compliance, and process improvement. According to American College of Medical Quality (2010), risk management involves identifying conditions that might put patients or a healthcare organization at the danger of undesirable outcome. In addition, the practice involves putting in place measures of avoiding, preventing, and controlling the risks. Quality management in healthcare organization is useful in managing, reducing, and alleviating risks. Risk management is an essential component of making sure that patients are safe, and that the care they get does not endanger their health or well-being. Process improvement is a quality management concept that involves the identification of weak areas in order to come up with ways to improve processes at the medical facility. Health care organizations gain from quality management procedures because administrators will be able to identify areas of weakness through compliance audits. Monitoring compliance is part of the quality management is a process of ensuring that health care givers follow procedures to ensure that patients are getting the finest care.

There are numerous different names that managers in various organizations have used to label their quality management programmes. Some of the names include Total Quality Management, Continuous Quality Improvement, Total Quality Programmes, Productivity Improvement Programmes, Quality Control, Cost Reduction Programmes, and Quality Assurance among others. Many organizations may use a number of these quality terms interchangeably although the terminologies all have somewhat diverse meanings (Reichert, 2011). The use of the terminologies may depend on the industry that they are used, and may differ from one country to another. The objectives of the organization, in pursuing amendments or enhancements may change terminologies. The previous experiences, the culture and the style of management may also influence the choice of terminology. However, in most cases, these quality management programs apply similar ideologies, values, techniques and guidance as those Total Quality Management applies.

The terminology that this organization chooses to use is Continuous Quality improvement. This is because, as the name suggests, quality management shall be a continuous process that will provide...

Each level of management in the organization shall examine all the process that they oversee in order to come up with ways of improving them. In addition, they will take the task of identifying effective teams to address the issues that they may find, determine the data to collect, gather data, test the data, execute changes, and give an assessment of what occurred (McLaughlin, and Kaluzny, 2006). The reason why the organization shall not use Total Quality Management is because many people perceive it as a process of reorganisation, cost cutting, providing a lot of training that is not focused on outcome and unsuitable traditions within some businesses.
The organization's Goals

The long-term goals of the organization are:

a. To protect and improve the health of individuals and populations through the provision of high quality services, which shall be as a result of continuous quality improvement

b. To open up regional branches throughout the country in order to ensure that we offer excellence services to a larger number of clients

The short-term goals of the organization are:

a. Deliver health care services that will ensure that patients are guaranteed their safety

b. To be able to meet the needs of patients in a timely manner while ensuring the effectiveness of the services that they receive

c. To recurrently identify waste and ineffectiveness in the provision of health care services, and eradicate them

Internal and external factors that influence quality outcomes

A number of internal and external factors affect quality outcome in the provision of health care. The internal factors that affect the quality of outcome are leadership, staffing levels, and operation review committees. An organization that enjoys the support of its leadership in offering quality services will succeed in having quality outcomes. However, in organization where the leadership of a healthcare organization pays less attention to the efforts of quality management, the quality of outcome will be at stake. In addition, staffing is an important aspect in determining the outcome of a quality management program. For instance, if there is inadequate staffing and the members of staff have inadequate training on matters of quality management, then this will affect the outcome negatively. Lastly, it is paramount that the utilization review committees need to have formal guidelines that inform their decisions and activities so that they can contribute positively to quality outcomes.

The external factors that affect the quality outcome are government funding on long-term care, provision of resources, and customer surveys. It is important that the government provides adequate funding because with inadequate funds health care facilities will provide poor care services. On the other hand, resources such as physical facilities from the government and other agencies will contribute to a better outcome as they will enhance the quality of service leading to a better quality outcome. Lastly, customer surveys are important because they give organizations a view of the quality of services that they are offering making them make necessary adjustments to improve the quality of outcome.

Fundamental quality-management policies that X should implement

X medical facility shall implement three fundamental quality-management policies that shall guide it in its continuous quality improvement programme. The first policy shall be the practice of carrying out compulsory customer surveys in order to help the organization understand its progress in terms of service delivery in order to implement necessary improvements. The second quality-management policy shall be regular communication of the organization's mission statement in order to ensure that all the stakeholders stick to the values that X medical facility stands for. The last fundamental quality-management policy that the organization shall implement is carrying out of constant employee surveys in order to comprehend whether the employees are satisfied with their job. This is important because unsatisfied employees will comprise the quality of services that they offer to the clients. These policies relate to risk management because the staff will increase their work efficiency to provide safe health care enhancing the quality of outcome.

The relationship between risk management and quality management

Risk management and quality management overlap in their functions. It is not possible to deal with quality management without having to talk about risk management. This is because both functions focus on ensuring patient's safety within and without the organization (ECRI Institute, 2009). The two disciplines relate to performance management because they work as an entity to enhance the performance by training employees to provide high quality services, which results in quality outcome. This is an indication that risk management, quality management and performance management cannot occur in isolation, but they function as…