Question

Patient Falls being prevented by, policies and procedures would put in place to assure the selected issue does not happen anymore? Key performance indicator will you select to measure the effectiveness of your efforts? Joint Commission

Answer 1

Patient Falls being prevented by, policies and procedures would put in place to assure the selected issue does not happen anymore? Key performance indicator will you select to measure the effectiveness of your efforts?

Answer:

To improve the health care services regarding injuries due to fall there must be any measurements regarding falls. Because if you don't have measurements, then you can't improve it. It is the quality principle. Measurements help you to track performance, then only we can say that we are improving, remains the same,or worsening in our achievement to decrease injuries related to falls.

In healthcare institutions there are many policies and procedures regarding fall prevention. Some of them are given below:

1. Imphasis on high risk patients i.e. there are some brain diseases related patients and spinal injury patients which are more prone to fall.

2. To provide safest environment and infrastructures in healthcare institutions.

3. Continued assessment and monitoring to high risk groups.

4. Adequate resources implementation.

5. Safety education and training to staff and family members of patients.

6. Fall and the post fall assessment and management.

There are Key Performance Indicators of patients, staff,organization and system.

KPI area of Patients including health outcomes, patients safety,satisfaction and empowerment,communication of patient with doctors and supporting staff, waiting time for services.

KPI area of Staff including the views of patient about health and social care quality, communication between and within participating organizations, changes to roles and work practices,professional's satisfaction.

KPI area of organization and system including length of hospital staying, emergency admissions, costs,usage of system, adoption of techniques and technologies.

Measures for Performance indicators

Outcome measures:

This is the first phase,if you want to reduce the fall you should measure it first because measurement will tell the performance data. Let's say in hospital how much falls occur in 30 days duration or weekly. So it is important to collect accurate measurements for outcome measures.

In Process measures:

If there are needs of key change to reduce the outcome or to impact the outcome measures. The process measures are directly linked with the outcome measures.

Balancing measures:

Improvements in one part of the system on the sake of degradation of other part is balancing. Like for reduce the length of hospital stay staff should collect the data of readmission of 30 days duration of particular group.