Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Quality Improvement in Healthcare
Nearly all healthcare organizations today are aware of the Quality Improvement (QI) movement and seek to actively instill their businesses with such elements. In fact, the past few decades have shown the QI movement to be the main approach for healthcare organizations to measure performance and engage in lasting changes (Colton, 2000). The foundations of QI reside with its origins which come from multiple arenas: "in systems engineering, as a way of defining production processes; in quantitative analysis, as a methodological approach for collecting and analyzing data; and in organizational behavior, as a way of understanding how QI fits with an organization's structure and management philosophy" (Colton, 2000). QI fundamentally stands as a mode for a healthcare organization to better itself through enhancing the way in which it delivers service and by improving patient outcomes (Colton, 2000). "The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research...
While these tenets might seem vague, they actually contain fundamental values that allow them to be applied to a range of disciplines and needs within the healthcare arena. Quality first originated as a process and desirable element to be achieved in the industrial arena by Shewart in 1931: this process focused on customer needs and minimizing defects and eventually spread to a range of other professional arenas (Varkey et al., 2007).
Various stakeholders in professional healthcare define it differently as a result of the fact that they have widely different goals and needs in the field. Quality to a nurse leader is going to be very different to a hospital administrator. Quality to a neurosurgeon is going to be different as quality to a pediatrician. For instance, clinicians have a truly massive role when it comes to driving quality improvements. They are the people who are working directly with patients who can truly better care at the most immediate level -- however, in order to do so, they need to feel like they have strong alliances and lots of support. Patients need to take an active role in QI as well. Patients can do this by communicating better with their physicians and not censoring anything -- side effects they might be having, issues in their medical history, or additional vitamins and supplements that one takes (familydoctor.org). Keeping one's clinician well informed is an absolute…
References
Colton, D. (2000). Quality improvement in health care. Conceptual and historical foundations. Eval Health Prof., 7-42.
Familydoctor.org. (n.d.). Medical Errors: Tips to Help Prevent Them. Retrieved from Familydoctor.org: http://familydoctor.org/familydoctor/en/healthcare-management/self-care/medical-errors-tips-to-help-prevent-them.html
Varkey, P., Reller, K., & Resar, R. (2007). Basics of Quality Improvement in Health Care. Mayo Clin Proc., 735-739.
Nursing Quality Improvement Activities Providing quality nursing care is the foundation of professional ethics for nurses. Nurses have a moral obligation to not only provide quality care, but to also to constantly strive for excellence in the quality of the care they furnish. Non-medical prescribing is increasingly being seen as a cost-effective option, quality improvement option by both the U.S. government and professional nursing societies. The employment of potentially dangerous preparations in
Health Care Disparities Race Related Healthcare disparities Serial number Socioeconomic status and health Correlation between socioeconomic status and race Health insurance and health Who are the uninsured people? Causes of health care disparities Suggestions for better health care system The latest studies have shown that in spite of the steady developments in the overall health of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities still experience an inferior quality of health services and are less likely to receive routine medical
Health Care Changes and Trends The healthcare industry in currently undergoing a highly necessary phase of reform. Following the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), hospitals, physicians, patients and economists are working to determine what the legislation could mean for them. The reality though is that the myriad changes on the horizon are difficult to predict because they are determined by the intercession of a wide variance of independent forces.
Health Care Delivery Systems The structure and organization of the resources that make it possible to provide health care services to target populations is referred to as a health care system. The variety of health care systems is very wide with strong evolutionary histories tied to the governments, religious organizations, charitable organizations, labor unions, and for-profit market participants. Five Health Care Delivery Systems Reid set out around the world to study healthcare systems
Health Care Quality Management as it Applies to Managed Care In the current age of improved answerability for quality of care, every healthcare expert should be conversant in the theory and paraphernalia of quality management) Quality Management-QM is an all-embracing attitude that pervades the management infrastructure, rules and customs of an establishment. It characteristically comprises of five fundamental doctrines -- undivided attention on the customer/supplier relationships; a stress on functional and
(Menzel, 1990, p. 3) Fisher, Berwick, & Davis alude to the idea of integration in health care, with providers linking as well as creating networks of electronic medical records and other cost improvement tactics. The United States and other nations over the last twenty or so years, have begun a sweeping change in health care delivery, regarding the manner in which health information is input, stored and accessed. Computer use