Resource management and cost analysis of quality improvement plans

Resource Manage Cost Analysis of Quality Improvement Pla

Costs and benefits of quality improvement plan

Communication is essential to the organizational success in all types of entities, but even more so for healthcare institutions, where people serve people and where the core of the operations lays on sensitive, life threatening, issues. As it has been mentioned, the number one concern raised by patients is that of improper communications between themselves and the medical staffs. At an extrapolated level however, communication failures are also observed between medical staffs and the family of the patient, as well as among the medical staffs themselves. In order to address this issue, a quality improvement plan has been devised and it is expected to generate numerous benefits. Still, the implementation of the plan would also reveal a series of costs. It is now as such important to reveal the benefits and costs associated with the quality improvement plan. At an initial level, the costs of the plan refer to the following:

Impressive financial investments as the plan has to be financially supported. This specifically means that medical institution has to allocate additional funds. But in a context in which it does not receive these funds from the state or through sponsorships, it will have to rethink its budget. In other words, other endeavors will have to take a second place as the financial resources would be scarce. Also, in order to generate a return on investment, the costs of providing the medical services would have to be increased, to as such generate patient dissatisfactions.

Training complexities. This set of difficulties refers to the specific components of the identified problem -- poor communication between medical staffs and patients and their families, and poor communications between medical staffs themselves. This twofold issue generates the need for twofold efforts in improving communications through both channels. Additionally, communications in the medical sector are often difficult to stimulate due to the difficult nature of the problems handled, but also due to the demanding and pressing job of the staffs, which tend to focus on saving lives, rather than communicating.

This brings one to the third limitation of the quality improvement plan. Particularly, the plan is focused on improving one issue not linked to the core operations of the healthcare facilities -- where these are focused on the provision of medical care, the plan comes to distract them from their target scope and have them focus on tertiary issues. In such a context then, the efficiency of the operations completed could be reduced.

Finally, a fourth cost assimilated with the quality improvement plan is revealed by the perceived resistance of the medical staffs in the implementation of the organizational change process. This resistance could however be reduced through HRM strategies of involving the employees in the change process, empowering them and motivating them to take active roles in the implementation of the quality improvement plan (Armstrong, 2009).

The quality improvement plan however also reveals a series of benefits, materialized primarily in the following:

Improved communication among the staffs leads to increased levels of operational efficiency as the information so necessary within the medical field is more efficiently transmitted from one medical staff to the other.

Improved communications between medics and patients lead to a higher rate of information collection, being possible for this to then lead to increased chances of diagnosing and treating the conditions at superior levels.

Improved communications with the patients ultimately enhance the levels of satisfaction on the part of the patients. At an organizational level, it could be argued that this satisfaction of the patient -- and of their families -- would materialize in a positive image for the hospice. Through world of mouth publicity, the patients and their family members would determine other individuals to access the services of the facility, which would as such enjoy higher levels of popularity, demands and would be better able to attain its objectives.

A final element which has to be noted -- and cannot be considered either as a cost or a benefit -- is represented by the increasing competition among medical care providers and the important developments characterizing the domain. These generate the constant need for evolution. Improved communications represent a mere part of the evolution necessary in order to keep up and remain competitive. In light of this realization, and in spite of the costs, it is believed that the benefits are greater and that the facility ought to implement the quality improvement plan.